


Knowing Home

by orphan_account



Series: Head Underwater [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (in later chapters), ADHD Lance, Autistic Keith, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gen, It's a sequel but can be read as standalone, Kidfic, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 10:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11484675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Keith and Lance have a lot to learn from each other. They should also probably tell the team they're dating at some point.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is set a few weeks after they get together. The time/scenario is jumped through a lot as the narrators remember things that have happened in that time but the following chapters will stay in the current moment sans reminiscing. This fic will be updated more slowly than head underwater until I finish my fantasy dragon au which I'm also updating alternately with this. Thank you to everyone who read and left kudos on that!

“How about ‘angelface’?” Lance hummed idly. He was splayed out across the bed in a way that forced Keith to lie basically on top of him so he wouldn't fall. Not that Keith minded. Having his head on Lance's chest while Lance absentmindedly toyed with his hair was Keith's favourite feeling in the world. He sometimes wished there was a way he could go about his whole life in that position. Fighting the Galra and trying to decode the social patterns of every alien race they met would be a lot nicer if he could do it all cocooned in Lance's warmth.

 

“I'm pretty sure you're just being deliberately antagonistic now.” He faced Lance with wide eyes. Keith knew if he looked innocent enough, Lance would have to be serious with him; one of many changes he'd noticed in Lance's behaviour. Unfortunately, though Lance said Keith had hundreds of little tells that indicated how he was feeling, Keith wasn't aware of them at the best times, and struggled to fake them without looking ridiculously obvious. Lance never held a joke over Keith's head, though - even if Keith wasn't really upset by it. “Are you just coming up with these on purpose to annoy me?”

 

Lance dropped an affectionate kiss to the top of  his head and Keith couldn't help the contented shiver that ran through him. Whenever Lance kissed his head or his nose, Keith died a thousand tiny deaths. He didn't think he'd ever be able to reach that level of casual adoration but Lance had mastered it immediately. It wasn't that Keith didn't _adore_ Lance. Requiting that with the casual way Lance managed to demonstrate it, constantly, was where the trouble lay. Fortunately Lance didn't seem to mind Keith's shy but explicit displays of affection; crawling into Lance's lap and squeezing him tight enough to hurt, waking up first in the morning and making breakfast in bed even though all they had was green goop because he'd seem people do it in movies.

 

 

“You know it means I love you, right?” Keith had mumbled. It was hard sometimes, that he couldn't even count on himself to know what Lance was thinking. When it came to Lance, he was usually right - but he grew up used to being constantly wrong, being punished and isolated for every emotion he misread, and it had fostered a firm self doubt in him. So he struggled for answers and second-guessed them when he got them, while Lance could drop his lips to Keith's forehead for a second and resolutely know that Keith knew he was loved.

 

That was where talking came in. Keith loathed having to express his feelings verbally when he could barely even understand them for himself, but there was nothing as solid as words for undoing all the symbolism and revealing what it all really meant. So Keith needed to talk, despite how much he hated it. Fortunately, he had Lance. Lance who noticed Keith's ever more extreme quests to prove his love so that completely that he would know for sure that Lance understood. Lance who took his hand under the table when he was overwhelmed, and sometimes when he wasn't, and who murmured, “You don't have to prove it to me. You could've just told me.”

 

It took continued gentle probing, but Keith felt like he was gradually learning and keeping to new patterns of healthy communication. As soon as he realised he was allowed to ask, he became a fountain of questions. Each time, the panic in his chest was smaller, and he began to learn that maybe Lance wouldn't be irritated like so many schoolteachers or uncomfortable and suddenly unfriendly like so many classmates.

Sometimes Lance would laugh, like when Keith asked, “Why do you always sleep in my bed when yours is way comfier?”

And Lance had replied, “‘Cause this bed’s got you in,” with a peck to Keith's cheek. After he'd discovered that Keith struggled to sleep in Lance's unfamiliar room, pots of things that looked suspiciously skin-care-y began to pile up on his counter. Lance barely ever slept in his room now, preferring to spend the night tangled up with Keith like he was now.

 

“I think we might be overdue for breakfast, angelface.”

Keith growled in the back of his throat at the nickname. Lance's chest jerked beneath him in a silent laugh.

If any of his teammates had noticed Keith's punctuality dying a sudden death, they hadn't said anything. Waking up at 5am to train before breakfast was becoming a distant memory, though he still committed a good half of his free time there and often dragged Lance into sparring with him too. Very reluctantly, he was learning that sleep and relaxation were also necessary components of a healthy lifestyle. He'd had to listen to Lance's multiple lectures about how beauty sleep _wasn't_ just a phrase - they were only helpful in that they did make him want to sleep. 

Hunk watched Lance's sleep schedule with an eagle eye, and Lance was a light sleeper so Keith usually ended up sleeping when Lance did to avoid crawling into bed later and waking him up. Even if he didn't fall asleep right away, he liked to just lay there with his head on Lance's chest and feel the weight of Lance's arm around him. He had a thing about weight - Lance had noticed it before Keith himself. He liked to lie on his front with his arms squashed underneath him, sometimes as a way to calm him down when he was on edge and sometimes just because he liked the feeling. Lance had found him lying awkwardly on the floor and thought he was upset.

“What you doing down there, _mi alma_?”

Smiling at the affectionate note in his voice, Keith had rolled onto his back and gazed up at Lance from the floor with the best shrug he could manage in the position. Lance knelt down and cupped his face with a fond grin.

“ _Me encanta tu sonrisa hermosa,"_  he murmured, fingers stroking across Keith's jaw. 

 

“I don't know,” Keith had said, answering his earlier question. Between Lance's processing issues often causing a little delay in his responses as he figured out what had just been said, and Keith often missing his cue to respond, conversations between the two of them often seemed wildly disjointed to anyone else listening in. Both of them tended to change subject randomly with no introduction and Lance especially would suddenly answer a question that had been posed and ignored five minutes ago and leave Keith giggling exasperatedly. It must seem strange to anyone else but to Keith there was no one else he'd rather talk to. “I just do it sometimes, I guess. It just feels good?”

 

“Oh, I think I get it. I have this rubber band I like to mess with and I like clicking my nails on stuff. My doctor called it self-stimulating, and my mom usually called it ‘ _Ay, pesado, stop pressing the buttons in my car!’”_

Keith remembered sitting up and laughing, only to lose his balance and fall again, bringing Lance down with him. They shuffled so he was pinned under Lance's weight and Lance gave him a knowing look but didn't tease, just lay there until Allura called them for dinner.

 

 

 

“Whatya thinking about?” Lance asked, brushing Keith's fringe away from his face only for it to fall back again.

“You,” Keith admitted. Lance's answering smile split his face in two. Keith felt Lance's lips on his forehead and reached up to hold Lance's cheek in his palm.

“I'm thinking about how pretty you are,” Lance whispered. “And breakfast.”

Then he sat up, ripping away the blankets and dislodging a very disgruntled Keith. Keith lay there pouting, hoping if he lay there long enough and looked pathetic enough, Lance would lift him out of bed and he'd get to feel those deceptively strong arms around him, maybe milk it and get Lance to carry him all the way down the hallway. He had no such luck; Lance left him to crawl out of bed on his own and steal one of Lance's shirts even though it was _his_ room and he had way more clothes there.

“Come on, _dormilón_ , before Hunk kills us both for skipping breakfast.”

 

***

 

Hunk was honestly glad to see Keith and Lance put that weird rivalry to bed. Keith seemed like a nice dude, if a little standoffish, and Lance just seemed to be compensating to himself for that little crush he used to have on Keith in his first year at the garrison. It wasn't exactly true love, considering they hardly ever interacted and it was basically just the natural culmination of the fact that Keith was both hot and ridiculously talented.

 

It was around the time they came out to each other - or more accurately, Hunk came out for Keith, _by_ _accident,_ and Lance at some point just have returned the favour because Keith seemed to know. Hunk had gotten to know Keith a lot better too, which was another accident really. While Keith didn't have anxiety he occasionally had episodes similar to anxiety attacks when he got overwhelmed. On the times when Shiro was on a mission or otherwise occupied Hunk was the one to calm him down, and they became friendly over the time spent in isolated rooms talking quietly while Keith tapped his fingers and slowly returned to his usual calmness.

And recently whenever Hunk spoke to Keith he'd noticed something… _Interesting_. He was used to Keith saying ‘Lance’ like it personally offended him, usually put on when Lance was in the room. But it had gradually transitioned until Keith would smile to himself whenever he referred to the blue paladin by name.It was weird. Not bad. But weird. 

 

 

He looked up as Lance and Keith stumbled into the room with matching bedheads. They stood at the counter with their hips pressed together as they helped themselves to food, and Lance leaned in and whispered something in Keith's ear that made the red paladin giggle. Everyone had been startled by Keith's giggle when they first heard it after Keith started to become more comfortable with the other paladins. It was strange because Keith didn't look at all like someone capable of producing such a _cute_ sound. They'd been hearing so often recently it almost sounded like background noise.

“So glad you finally decided to join us,” Hunk quipped as they settled down at the table with their chairs pulled close together. His gaze landed not so subtly on Lance's bowl as he checked to make sure it was properly full. “Sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Keith replied, while Lance nodded. Hunk had made it his mission to make sure Keith knew he was included with him, Lance, and Pidge. Keith was generally content to hang around Shiro or by himself, but Hunk was always careful to make sure Keith knew he was always welcome to hang around the paladins his own age. The difference between shy and unfriendly was often not an incredibly obvious one, but it meant two incredibly different things going on inside. 

Recently, Keith had been spending a lot of time with Lance. Hunk tried not to feel like a mom whose shy son just asked to bring a friend for a playdate. He got on well with Pidge, too, and Hunk would often find them sharing companionable, nerdy silence in the rec room. It was obvious Keith preferred the company of individuals because most times he was invited to hang out with all three of them at once he'd stick close to Lance's side and jump every time Pidge’s voice was raised excitedly.

He watched the way they never left eachother’s sides as they took their plates to the dishwashing machine and left the room, presumably to sit around for half an hour before training because Lance always got sick if he moved around too much right after eating. Hunk caught Allura’s gaze following them too, looking as bemused as Hunk felt.

“Man, I remember when they couldn't be in the same room without bickering,” he reminisced.

Allura smiled to herself and mumbled something in the direction of Coran, who fell into a fit of laughter that earned him a glare from the princess. Everyone turned to look at them curiously and she shot him a glare that said ‘well done for being subtle’.

“The princess was just remembering how back on Altea, we used to say when a child was unkind to another it was because they harboured… Other feelings. It was really just a way to embarrass them into behaving, but it was an amusing thought.”

“Like they were pulling each other's pigtails,” Shiro mumbled with a thoughtful frown.

Hunk tried to hide his own surprise as he began to piece together the way Lance had reacted when he found out Keith was gay and the way he'd crumbled when Keith had claimed not to remember him from the garrison.

“Pidge,” he hissed, “May I have a word?”

 

“Uh, sure?”

 

“You know Lance's little, um, soft spot for Keith? I don't think it went away as much as we thought,” he hissed.

 

Pidge laughed a little too loudly, attracting looks from the other three. “Are you kidding? Lance's whole body is one big soft spot for Keith.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! If only I was as eager to reply to comments as I was to write more chapters,, I love reading all your comments guys, thank you so much for the support! Hopefully I will continue to update on a roughly every other day basis, alternately with my dragon/faery au. Also I like to pretend Keith is like five inches shorter than Lance instead of like two.....because

“Noooo,” Lance breathed quietly. It wasn't a sound of genuine distress, Keith was curled on top of Lance's bed, wearing Lance's shirt, the one he usually slept in. Even on Lance, it was oversized. On Keith, it was huge, making him look even smaller than he was. It was rucked up slightly but still reached just above his thigh. In sleep he looked young and peaceful as he snuffled into the pillow. Lance was loathe to wake him. Almost. Desperation to hear his voice in person after three days away on the mission won out in the end. 

 

“Hey,” he whispered loudly, so it was more of a hiss. Always a light sleeper, Keith startled at the sound and sat up, immediately defensive. Then he saw Lance and relaxed. 

 

It always amazed Lance how quickly Keith could move. He was out of bed in seconds and crossed the room in a single bound to bury himself in Lance's chest. 

“You're back!” Lance mourned the fact that he couldn't feel Keith's solid little body against him, but he'd come straight here from debriefing and hadn't had a chance to remove his paladin suit. “How was the mission? I bet you did amazing. No, I know you did.”

 

“I forgot how short you were, number four,” Lance scoffed into Keith's hair, a little uncomfortable with the praise. Keith was just so stupidly talented at everything he touched and he didn't really care if other people thought he was good or not. He didn't need the praise, not of his physical talents anyways, but at some point he'd found out that Lance  _ did _ . Since then he'd become earnestly obsessed with complimenting everything Lance did, as a way to make up for the bickering that he hadn't realised had been genuinely upsetting to Lance at times. He still cracked jokes and teased by Lance's intelligence and piloting skills were hardly ever on the menu anymore. It was so sweet and thoughtful that it made Lance's heart hurt, but he still got embarrassed when Keith got all serious on him like this. 

 

“I missed you,” he added. He could feel Keith's shoulderblades through the shirt. They'd hardly spoken in three days - anything they said through the comms link could he heard by everyone else. It was another reason to come clean to their teammates but Keith was shy and wanted to put off the onslaught of teasing and other people's opinions, and the general fact that people would know about something so private and vulnerable, for as long as possible. Lance couldn't help but agree that it would be nice to have it all to themselves for a while. Once everyone knew they were unlikely to have privacy ever again. Still, it meant the only private exchanges they'd really had were when Lance had been on sentry duty at their overnight camp while Shiro and Hunk slept, and Keith had been up monitoring the comms back at the castle. Whispered  _ goodnight _ s and  _ I love you _ s had been small mercies after a month of sharing a bed. 

 

Lance managed to peel Keith off him so he could remove his suit. He grinned at Keith's whine of protest. 

“You are  _ so _ cute,  _ cariño _ ,” he said fondly. “I can't believe you were sleeping in my shirt.”

 

Keith blushed and looked like he wanted to hide himself in said shirt, scrunching his nose up adorably. “Yeah, so?” he grumbled. Lance just snorted at him and began to struggle out of the pants beneath his armour, which lay discarded on the floor. It wasn't exactly news that Keith was verbally shy about his affection, or that he used pretend derision to hide his feelings. 

 

They'd developed a rudimentary code of sorts between them. Keith wasn't good at reading or returning body language or  _ looks _ , but at the same time a lot of nonverbal communication was required between them. The code arose semi-naturally when Lance developed a habit of covering for Keith's social missteps with a stupid joke and a touch to Keith's thigh, until Keith began to associate a laugh and a thigh touch with the fact that he'd missed a cue. When he'd brought it up, shyly admitting that he'd found it useful on multiple occasions, they'd sat together on this same bed and figured out an extensive code for multiple other things. In private, they could usually just say things, but the code mostly referred to things neither of them wanted attention drawn to in public: Keith would rest his hand briefly on Lance's shoulder if his volume started to. spike; Lance would, gently, poke Keith in the side if he said something inappropriate or came off too mean; either one of them could nudge the other's foot with their own if they started to get overwhelmed and needed an excuse to exit. 

 

It was hard not to run out of subtle but noticeable cues suitable for use in public, which led to things like Lance staring pointedly at Keith's elbow meaning Lance or possibly someone else was about to touch him. That's what he was doing now, staring at Keith's elbow and waiting for the shorter boy to follow his gaze before scooping him up princess-style and carrying him to the bed. He was firmly convinced that Keith's squeal was the  _ best _ sound he'd ever heard and ever would hear. 

  
  


***

  
  


Everyone was being weird. Keith was well aware that his team was weird, but this was some extra-special, specific weirdness. Every time he so much as looked at Lance he would turn around to find Shiro staring at him with this strange expression that made him feel… Small. The worst thing was, this was the kind of thing he would ask Shiro about, but he couldn't because Shiro was the  _ problem _ . 

 

When training finally ended and he managed to catch up with Lance away from everyone else, Lance spoke before he could. 

“Hunk is being super weird,” he said immediately. “Like Pidge? Pidge is always super weird so I can't tell if it's a normal amount of weirdness, but Hunk is being  _ really _ weird,definitely more than normal.”

 

Keith just blinked at him in confusion and Lance took that as his cue to continue. “He keeps giving me these real sad, pitying looks. He's looking at me like I just lost a family member or something, and then when I mentioned you he looked at me like… like I was a three legged dog, dragging itself around on its little wheel thingy. Man I love those dogs…”

 

_ “Shiro's _  being weird too! I couldn't figure out what it was but it sounds exactly like your thing with Hunk! I-”

 

He was cut off by the alarm blaring to call them to the control room. Allura was known to be trigger-happy when it came to the alarm, sometimes just using it to interrupt Lance's lie-ins or summon them for a mildly urgent strategy meeting. Still, Lance squeezed Keith's hand tightly for a moment before letting go and following Keith to the control room. When you'd had as many near-death experiences as Lance, you learned to take nothing for granted. 

  
  


****

  
  


“Paladins,” Allura announced breathlessly. Lance and Keith were the last to arrive and Allura was clearly impatient. “We've received a distress signal from this planet.” A hologram of an Earth-like planet appeared before them. Many of the planets inhabited by the more humanoid species tended to resemble Earth. Lance breathed a sigh of relief - hopefully that meant they weren't going to have to deal with more those aliens who looked like animate blobs of food goo. 

 

“Scans show it is deserted and has never been colonised. None of its native species are advanced ones. We found a small landing station that doesn't appear to be Galra. In essence this planet is a deserted way station that is only really used for ships to land on for emergency repairs,” Coran chimed in. “That's why there's no Galra presence - there's nothing of worth here.”

 

“However,” the princess continued, “We found wreckage of both a small Galra fighter ship and what appears to be an escape pod - not Galra.”

 

“So someone was being chased and managed to survive the battle with the Galra ship, but were stranded when their escape pod was wrecked?” Shiro guessed. “Then we just send one lion in to collect them and drop them at the nearest safe planet.”

 

“Well, hopefully, yes,” Coran agreed, looking slightly stressed. “Only, we're slightly suspicious of the fact that one small civilian escape pod somehow managed to take down a Galra fighter ship.”

 

“After the fiasco with Rolo and Nyma which almost cost us the blue lion,” Allura said pointedly - at which everyone's gaze turned to Lance and the blue paladin felt his face turn dark red, “It would be wise of us to be cautious. Lance, Keith, you two will go down to the planet in your lions. That way we still have three lions to defend the castle if it's a Galra ploy to get us to leave the castle undefended, but you'll have support if the refugees you find pose a threat.”

 

Lance smiled at the prospect of a mission alone with Keith. He never felt closer to his teammates than when he was on a mission, their bonds exacerbated by their lions, adrenaline and fierce protectiveness surging within in him. Getting to fly alone with Keith, even on a routine retrieval mission, was a very different experience than a morning tangled up in bed with him, but an equally attractive one. Honestly Lance was just happy to spend time with Keith, whether it was spent sharing childhood anecdotes in the dark or fighting for their lives against Galra warships. 

“Sounds good,” he said, at the same time as Hunk said, “I'll go with Lance instead,” and Shiro said, “I'll go with Keith.”

 

“I can handle this, Shiro,” Lance argued, his heart dropping to his feet at the fact that Shiro didn't want him going on such a simple mission. Keith folded his arms and shot glares between Shiro and Hunk, unsure who to be annoyed at. Their eyes met in confusion and Keith grimaced, knowing how much it hurt Lance when Shiro didn't trust him. He started mouthing something but Lance didn't catch it because Allura started talking again. 

 

“ _ Thank you, _ paladins, but Lance  _ and _ Keith are going. If this isn't a set up, we're expecting terrified refugees. Lance, you'll comfort them and make sure they trust us,” she said warmly. Lance tried not to preen at the veiled compliment to his diplomatic abilities. It was true; while Shiro was an excellent diplomat and negotiator with governments and ruling classes they encountered, and Hunk could be counted on to keep morale high within Voltron, Lance was the one people trusted most. As soon as they set foot on an alien planet, Lance would be there flirting and smiling and sharing his warmth. He looked up to catch Keith watching him with a proud smile. 

 

“Red is the fastest lion,” Allura continued, “So if anything goes wrong you'll be able to get out fast. We don't have the time to argue - these people could be badly wounded.”

 

Hunk shot Lance a concerned look. He looked away to see Keith receiving an identical one from Shiro. What was going  _ on _ ? 

  
  


***

 

The descent to the planet was easy, though Keith remained on edge. Coran guided them to the crash site and they quickly scouted the Galra ship for hostiles first. It was only a small fighter, manned by sentries and remotely piloted. It didn't seem like they were chasing anything too important, then, most likely escapees from a prison camp or something like that. The sentries all lay lifelessly on the ground and the ship was in pretty bad shape from the crash, but Keith ran through each one with his bayard just to be safe. 

“You heard what Allura said.” Lance's voice came through his helmet and the air at once, close enough to hear naturally as he bumped his armor clad hips into Keith's. “Whoever crashed could be badly hurt. Let's go.”

 

Lance made his way to the pod on foot, using his jetpack in bursts for speed. Keith stayed in his lion, alert and ready to leap into action at any moment. He couldn't help it if he wasn't quick to trust mysterious distress calls. Especially when Lance's safety was at stake. He was so on edge he almost shot a burst of fire when Lance's voice crackled through the comms on a harsh gasp. 

“Lance?” Keith snatched his hand away from where it was hovering above the control pad. Being ready to defend Lance was one thing, but the extra second of reaching his arm back to the controls wasn't worth accidentally incinerating the blue paladin. “What is it?”

 

Keith tensed again as a sharp wail was heard through his helmet. The wail stopped abruptly and Lance's voice was heard over a waning moan. Keith breathed a sigh of relief at the realisation that the noise hadn't come from Lance. 

 

“Uh, Keith?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“There's a baby in this escape pod.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all Keith's Pov. There won't be much of a focus outside of this chapter on Keith's galra heritage because I don't want to complicate this with tons of different ideas but it will be revealed during this fic. This chapter is mostly centred around the baby's arrival so there isn't as much fluff sadly BUT I will make up for it with copious amounts in the next chapter. The next chapter will also be longer, so it'll be a few days before the next update to avoid being rushed

“What do you mean, there's a _baby_?” Keith shrieked.

 

“I mean there's a freaking baby in this goddamn escape pod!”

 

Keith opened his mouth to protest when his screen lit up with a visual feed that appeared to be coming from Lance's helmet. He could see Lance's arms held out in front of the camera and, true to his word, he was holding a _baby._  It looked mostly human in the way that, say, Alteans did, but Keith was going to go ahead and assume that considering how far they were from Earth it was nothing but coincidentally humanoid. Its hair was a very solid black, with purple undertones not naturally occurring in humans - what baby had hair anyway? Its eyes shone with a more vibrant version of the same purple, which also underlaid its skin tone where the blood was closer to the surface, where humans had a pinkish tint instead.

 

“It kind of looks human,” Lance said casually.

 

“It's not human, look at it! It's got purple eyes!”

  


“I mean, so do you,” Lance replied. For some reason that made Keith bristle. His eyes weren't _purple_. They just reflected weirdly in the light sometimes. It didn't matter, anyway, because it wasn't like he had an alien knife hidden under his bed or anything. And even if he did, that didn't mean he was anything but 100%, bona-fide human. Nothing about this alien baby was anything like him. Not its eye colour, not its genetics, not the planet it came from. 

 

“There's someone else in here,” Lance added, breaking Keith's brooding silence. “Unresponsive…” he trailed off hesitantly as the feed turned to a helmeted figure in dark armour while Lance held the baby to his chest. Keith could hear him breathing shakily as he removed the silent pilot's helmet. It slid off when Lance tugged on it and-

“Lance, get out of there!” Keith yelled.

There was a Galra in the escape pod. His armour wasn't Galra, but the deep purple of the skin underneath it certainly was. His eyes were open, filled with dull yellow. Keith was already leaping out of Red and drawing his bayard by the time Lance's voice crackled through his helmet again.

 

“Keith… He's dead.” Lance turned at the sound of Keith's footsteps on the ground as he hovered near the escape pod. The baby had stopped crying and was nestled close to Lance's chest, breathing softly. Keith eyed it like it was a bomb.

“I don't understand, _”_ Lance mused.  _“_ He was shielding the baby. Why would a Galra soldier have sacrificed his life to protect this _possibly human_ baby from other Galra? It doesn't make any sense at all. This baby should be so fragile, I don't know how it could’ve survived the crash.” He turned to the baby, who was in turn staring at Keith. “You're a lucky baby, huh?” he cooed, bouncing the small creature up and down gently. Keith shied away from its inquisitive stare.

“Lance, we need to go,” he said urgently, eyes not leaving the baby. He didn't _trust_ it. He'd never been more eager to finish a mission. “Wait. Is it just me or… Did that baby used to be more purple?”

Lance looked down at the baby in his arms. It gazed up at him innocently and Lance smiled at it, squeezing its chubby cheeks playfully. It was an unmistakable pink colour that rose to the surface. The baby's hair, too, was a more natural colour - a similar brown to Lance, in fact. There was no mistaking the differences. It had  _changed_.

“Keith, hold Lucky,” Lance deposited the child in Keith's arms before he could protest. It was surprisingly heavy. "I'll tell them we're on our way back."

 

Keith couldn't even begin to fathom an appropriate reaction to Lance's nonchalance towards the shape-shifting, purple baby. Instead, he turned his attention to the other important matter. "You can't name a baby Lucky, Lance!”

 

“I mean… it _is_ a lucky baby." 

 

“ _Lance_ -”

  
  


***

  
  


Lance had been reluctant to let the dubiously named child leave his arms for Coran to examine. As soon as he was done Lance immediately snatched the now crying baby back and began his shushing in earnest. Keith watched with a fond smile aimed at Lance's gooey noises, though he glared fiercely at the baby when it looked at him. Lance's adorable goofiness around the baby made it difficult to maintain a scowl of appropriate intensity. 

 

“What did you find out?” he asked sullenly, jamming his hands into his pockets.

 

“Hey now,” Lance grinned, “There's enough of me to go around, so there's no need to be jealous.”

 

Keith scowled. “That is _not_ why I'm mad. Call me crazy, but I just don't trust a mysterious shape-shifting Galra baby!”

 

“ _Half_ Galra, actually, number four,” Coran corrected cheerfully. “Your little ‘Lucky’ definitely has Galra heritage, but we don't think she's completely Galra. While it is true that some of them can shape-shift, much like Alteans, she looks completely human. Particularly considering how young she is. It shouldn't be possible for any Galra to assimilate this well at all, let alone at this age.”

“We also found some internal abnormalities that contrasted with what we know about Galra biology,” Pidge explained. Pidge had begged to be allowed to help Coran examine the baby, always jumping at the chance to learn more about alien biology. Especially if it was Galra, examining the baby could prove invaluable for Pidge’s attempts to interact with Galra biometrics. “We can only assume the Galra you found in the pod was her father... Perhaps illicit affairs with the enemy are universal after all. We have no idea how she came to be conceived, or if her other parent is really human or simply humanoid.”

 

Lance looked like he'd tuned out after he'd heard _girl_ and _half Galra,_ going back to rocking and cooing at the baby once he had learned the important things. He looked so happy that Keith almost wasn't mad. If only the cause of his joy wasn't an infant that could easily have been trained to kill them while they slept. It was nothing to do with jealousy, whatever Lance said. He was just trying to keep everyone safe.

  
  


***

  
  


“So… I kind of hate babies,” Keith said into the darkness. He wasn't even sure if Lance was awake for his confession-come-realisation. He'd not been sleeping much up to this point in the night, but he usually struggled stay up past what would be Earth's four am no matter what the circumstances. The baby didn't wake up that much in the night, at least, but Lance kept getting up to check on her anyway and every time he shoved Keith off him to get up, Keith felt a little more irritation at the baby build up inside him.

 

“Mrff?” Lance's voice was groggy with exhaustion but he was awake, shuffling around in the bed to face Keith properly. They'd taken up a position where Lance was laying on Keith's chest instead of their usual arrangement, so as to be less of a disturbance when he got up for the millionth time.

 

“I don't like babies. I don't get them and they always _want_ things and I don't know what. And what if one was sick on me? I don't know if I could survive that, Lance,” he sighed.

 

Lance stroked Keith's hip bone in the darkness and he couldn't help caving into the touch, especially when Lance did that thing where he kissed Keith but he was smiling so hard that it didn't really feel like a kiss, just Lance pressing his smile against Keith's face like he was sharing it.

“Babe, _no one_ knows what babies want. You just have to try everything until they shut up. That's not a failure of yours, it's a failure of _babies_.” He paused. His eyes shone thoughtfully in the darkness before he said, “You should hold her. It's just me so if she embarrasses you I'll be the only one to know, and she's sleepy right now so she won't be any trouble! I'll protect you from the evil ninja baby.”

 

Keith made a noise of wordless dissent. It was futile - moments later he was being gently guided upright against the pillow and had a baby deposited in his arms. Lucky - Keith couldn't believe no one had stopped Lance from giving her such a stupid name - was giggling and clutching at his face. Instinctively, he ducked out of her reach, which made her pout and wobble her lip. Lance was looking at him expectantly. 

He wavered under Lance's stern expression. “What if her hands are sticky? What if she's evil and has poison barbs on her hands?”

All that did was earn him a flat glare from Lance until he relented and let Lucky put her hands on his cheeks. She was surprisingly strong, pressing his cheeks together like a fish. Keith was relatively certain he looked completely stupid. Meanwhile, Lance was staring at him like he'd personally created the whole entire universe and then given it to Lance. 

“ _Babyyyy_ , you look so adorable,” Lance squeaked. Keith remarked at the odd way he addressed the baby, until Lance looked down at Lucky and grinned, “ _Le gusta, ¿eh?”_ Which meant _Keith_ was the baby he was referring to _._

 

“Don't call me that,” he grumbled. It was meant to sound threatening, but he was blushing and, Jesus, he was smiling. Stupid Lance and his stupid petnames that Keith's own brain wouldn't let him have the dignity of genuinely hating.

 

Lance was too busy making suffocated noises at something to notice it, but Keith suddenly realised that Lucky looked different. Not just a little bit different. Keith was suddenly looking at a full on baby Galra. Having previously only seen adult warrior Galra, the tiny purple baby in his lap was somehow more disconcerting than if a normal, adult one had suddenly appeared in his room with guns blazing. He almost threw the baby back into her crib with a cry.

“ _Lance_! _”_

 

 _“¿Qué pasa, neno?”_ Lance's head jerked up at Keith's shout. He followed it with a yelp of his own when he caught sight of the incredibly purple baby in the crib. All the noise caused her to start crying again; Keith watched in admiration as Lance stifled his own worry and picked up the baby Galra with nonchalant ease, rocking her gently as though she didn't look just like the aliens who nearly killed him hundreds of times. As he shushed her softly, she slowly began to turn back into the chubby, pink baby she'd been just moments ago.

“See?” Keith had no idea what he was supposed to be seeing, but he nodded numbly. “We already knew she was half Galra. Something must have caused her to want to look more like them.”

 

Keith tried to stop himself staring. “But- how can you - she looks like _them,_ ” he hissed.

 

Lance just shrugged. “She's a baby, Keith. An occasionally purple baby, I guess. I just didn't want her to cry. It's not like she's evil just because she's purple.”

 

Still, Keith was about as far away from her as he could get without falling off the bed, and he intended to stay there until she was back in the crib next to Lance's side of the bed. What if she woke up in the middle of the night and clawed Lance's throat out? _That's stupid,_  he told himself. His mental voice of reason always sounded like Lance's voice these days. It was a terrible adaption of his brain's, because it made him even more determined to prove it wrong.

 

“She turned Galra when I touched her,” he whispered. It could be just a coincidence - he wanted so badly for it to mean nothing - but it was one in a chain of many. There was probably some kind of philosophical principle that Pidge would know the name of about how many related coincidences could occur before they stopped being coincidences. Keith hoped it was a lot.

 

“Go to sleep, my love.” Lance kissed him, once under his jaw and once more on his temple. He opened his mouth to say something, about the knife, about his parents, about the scanner reacting to his hand… and he couldn't do it. Was it really lying if he only knew tidbits of the truth? “I can hear your little brain whirring.”

  
Keith's hands were feeling for vibration at his temples in confusion by the time a little tap to his wrist alerted him that it was just another weird thing people said. Thank god it was, because if Lance could really hear Keith's brain making thinking noises then he would probably never sleep and Keith couldn't handle that kind of guilt. Lance deserved carefree, uninterrupted sleep. Ideally, Lance deserved to be back in his own bed on Earth, preferably having never left in the first place, but he wasn't. The universe wasn't fair. Luckily for Keith - otherwise he would've never met Lance. It was a paradox, because Lance claimed that Keith deserved love, deserved _Lance's_ love; a love that he'd never have found if it wasn't for the situation they were in, a scenario Lance surely didn't deserve. Yet after hearing it so many times, he was starting to believe what Lance said, that maybe Keith deserved love, too.


	4. Chapter 4

After a whole night passed peacefully and the baby hadn't attacked them, Keith's excuse that he didn't trust her was rapidly waning in its legitimacy. His attitude towards her had begun to change, although slowly. He still refused to hold her, but Lance accepted that he was probably spooked by her transformation the last time he did that. Instead, he disappeared to the shower when Lance got out of bed and started getting the baby ready. It was the fastest Lance had ever seen him get up since they'd started sharing a bed, and he was lucky he got out so fast. There was a smell emanating from Lucky that was most certainly _not_ fortuitous.

“ _¡Uy, qué peste, chiquita!”_

 

He held his nose with one hand and the baby with the other as he sprinted into the hallways in search of someone who could help. It was Coran who'd managed to get her to eat some food goo last night  (“That's another great advantage of this wholesome cuisine!” he had chirped, hands clasped together earnestly. “It's suitable for all ages!” As if the disgusting space slime couldn't get any less appetising, he'd revealed that it was, in essence, babyfood.) so it was Coran he hoped to find now. The redhead was seemingly the most qualified person in the castle to deal with stinky alien babies.

 

Finding Coran only took a few minutes of prowling, trying to breathe through his mouth and then remembering that smells were just small particles and he definitely didn't want particles of whatever was making that stench in his _mouth_. Coran’s whistling was so loud Lance hoped he was never needed on any kind of stealth mission, and it made him quite easy to find once Lance entered the central areas of the ship. “Coran! Urgent baby issues here,” he yelped, skidding to a stop when he caught up with the Altean.

 

“I can smell that from here,” Coran complained, though he only sounded marginally less upbeat than usual, eyeing Lucky with amazement. “That's an impressive odour, number six.” She gargled amiably at him, reaching out a chubby hand. Lance shifted her on his hip and looked hopefully at Coran as he let her clutch his finger.

 

“You found her that crib, so I was hoping you'd be able to find some other equipment too.” The castle in general seemed equipped as both a warship and what must have originally been the residence of the Altean royal family. Lance was praying that meant there'd be some diapers lying around _somewhere_.

 

“Hmm, let's check the nursery. Come on, this way.”

 

Only Coran, Lance thought idly, wouldn't think to mention the fact that the castle had a nursery until _now_.

  
  


***

  


“Lance, did you see anything in the escape pod?” Keith asked. “Like… a knife or something, maybe?” He glanced at where the baby was laying in her crib, arms waving happily.

 

Lance blinked a few times to banish the tangle of insignificant thoughts he'd been indulging in, turning towards the other paladin. “Huh, what?” Keith waited a few seconds as Lance relayed the words in his head and finally processed the sentence. “Oh, a knife? I don't know, babe. I mean, I guess he would've had some kind of weaponry with him but I didn't really have time to look. I don't remember anything specific. Why you ask, _pollito_?”

 

Keith's arms were folded across his chest. Blocking that chest from view was a criminal offence as far as Lance was concerned, treasonous to the name of Voltron. Especially when Keith was fresh from training and his black shirt was clinging to his torso and damp with sweat. Lance could practically feel himself drooling.  

“Nothing,” Keith muttered. “It's nothing.”

 

“ _¿Qué tienes, cariño?_ ” Lance asked, sidling up behind him. Keith tensed, then relaxed as Lance slid his arms around Keith's waist loosely and rested his head on the red paladin’s shoulders. “There's something on your mind.” Being so close, he could hear the quiet noises of Keith sucking on his lip, the soft pop as he released it. One nervous tic in a line of many. After a moment he simply shook his head. It worried Lance when he bottled things up, but it would be wrong to push.

 

“Okay,” he said quietly. Then, “C’mon. Even if you're not hungry, me and Lucky are.”

 

“It's ‘Lucky and I’,” Keith muttered as Lance dragged him into the dining room, rolling his eyes fondly. Lance seemed to have become the baby's unofficial guardian, and no one had made any long term plans about what to do with her yet. He assumed they'd have to leave her with someone once they found an appropriate guardian - he didn't have enough fingers to count the reasons why it was a bad idea to have a baby in the castle. It might be tricky to find a guardian who didn't mind her heritage, though.

 

Despite Allura’s attempts to make them eat all meals together, dinner was usually a more haphazard affair. They ate breakfast together since the introduction of the alarms in order to make sure everyone was awake before noon, and shared a post-training lunch. After that, everyone ran on different schedules and didn't always make it to the dining room hall at the same time. Currently, only Shiro was seated, with Allura keeping him company though she looked a little strained. Lance felt a pang of amused sympathy: for someone with such interesting experiences, Shiro told the most _boring_ stories, and his jokes were even worse. He glanced at Keith and saw him with a similar expression. He wondered how long Allura had been trapped.

 

“Shiro, _Princess,_ ” he interrupted, grinning widely at Allura. Keith's glare was burning daggers into his back, or so he assumed from the way both Allura and Shiro looked behind him with taken aback expressions. They both returned the cursory greetings and Allura took the interruption as an opportunity to make her excuses and disappear, more frantic than she ever usually was.

 

“Takashi, that story is so boring,” Keith complained. He let out a little _oof_ when Lance jabbed him in the side, but made no move to apologise to the black Paladin like he usually did when he spoke so harshly. Whatever their relationship was before they ended up trapped in space together, Keith clearly felt comfortable saying it.

 

Lucky made a low noise in her throat and reached out for Keith's face. She never cried, at least she hadn't so far, but she had a veritable library of expressive little sounds. Keith's eyebrows jumped up and he instinctively took a step away from her, Lance and Shiro’s gazes both drawn to him in surprised at the frantic movement.

“Keith hates babies,” Lance explained mournfully.

 

Shiro laughed in agreement, holding out his arms for her. “Here, I'll give you a break,” he offered. For some reason, Lance was reluctant to let her go, but his tired arms thanked him when he did. She was surprisingly heavy.

 

“She doesn't cry. It's hard to tell sometimes, if she's hungry or whatever, because she only makes these little noises and it's hard to figure out.” He wrinkled his nose. “Ugh, and when I had to change her… There's no way any human baby smells that bad. It really was evil.”

 

Keith flinched in the corner of Lance's vision. Shiro’s eyes flickered between him and Lucky in surprise. “That's not a great word choice considering her parentage, Lance.”

 

“Just because one of her parents was Galra… We don't know if she's evil,” Keith burst out. Lance and Shiro both turned to him with matching raised eyebrows, but he didn't seem to notice or be fazed. “I mean, we don't know all Galra are evil. Maybe there's good ones. And we haven't encountered any half Galra at all so even if there were some kind of, of evil genes, maybe they'd be counteracted or not be as bad.” He stopped, mouth a little _o_ of surprise like he'd only just realised he spoke aloud. Nervous in the awkward silence, he started nibbling at his thumb.

 

“Sorry ba- _Keith_. Although for the record, I don't think she's evil. You're the one who doesn't trust her,” he pointed out. It was kind of amazing how passionate Keith was about it, actually. Could a seventeen year old boy get broody? Seeing Keith so protective, Lance definitely felt like it. To the extreme that he kind of wanted to grab Keith by the collar and scream, “Have my babies!”

 

Shiro inadvertently saved Lance's ass from horrible embarrassment when stood up and clapped a brotherly hand on Keith's shoulder. Lance felt a possessive jealousy rear its head inside him and had to clamp down the urge to pull Keith into his arms and make sure everyone knew he was taken. It was just a father figure move - he knew Keith saw Shiro as an older brother more than anything, (what did that make them, he wondered, if he saw Shiro as a father figure and Keith saw him as an older brother? The thought that he was Keith's metaphorical nephew by that reasoning startled a small laugh out of him that he he had to cover with a cough.) but he couldn't help feeling a small sense of rejection every time Keith needed someone that wasn't him. His old therapist called it rejection sensitive dysphoria but he called it the freaking worst.

 

Keith knew how he felt, or to the extent that he'd been able to put it into words anyway. Every tiny rejection felt like an enormous betrayal and he could easily fixate on tiny things for hours until he was convinced all of his friends hated him. Still, it was a shock when he felt a cold hand pressing against his back where it’d snuck up under his shirt. He grinned, feeling Keith's stupid fingerless gloves scrape lightly against his skin as he snuck his hand back out before Shiro noticed.

 

“What was that about, buddy?” Shiro searched Keith's face earnestly. It took Lance a moment to remember the actual conversation, Keith's passionate defense of Lucky’s potential character.

 

Keith shrugged. “She shouldn't grow up being hated for what she is. Kids learn from what they hear. No one deserves to hear that they're _evil_. That's all.”

 

“You wanna hold her?” Shiro offered, raising her towards him in gentle suggestion. “Maybe you could start acting on that idea of yours by not treating her like she's holding a knife.”

 

Keith reared away like he'd been bitten, pathetically trying to shelter himself behind Lance. Poor Shiro, for his part, looked desperately confused as to why Keith would wax lyrical in defense of her honour, then act as though she had the plague. He looked to Lance for some kind of explanation and Lance snapped, never one for keeping secrets like aloof, brooding Keith.

“Lucky turns Galra when Keith touches her,” Lance blurted. He held his hands up helplessly. “Sorry, mullet. I can't lie to _El Jefe_.”

 

“ _Possibly,_ ” Keith added hastily. “I've only held her once. It could be a coincidence.”

 

“Let's find out,” Shiro said brightly as he dumped he baby in Keith's arms and forced him to clutch at her so she didn't fall to the hard floor below. Sure enough, she began to change. The appearances she settled on was less pronounced, closer to the almost-human baby Lance found in the escape pod in the first place. It was mostly like looking at a human baby through a purple lense, though her features had a new sharpness to them, and she was a little larger and seemed to have more hair. Keith frowned down at her with an annoyingly kissable pout. He held her protectively at his chest when Shiro stepped forward in shock. He hadn't seen her in the escape pod, so it was more of a surprise for him.

 

“What are you doing, baby,” Keith hissed. “Go _back_.”

 

She giggled at him and held his nose tightly between her fingers. Lance mourned the loss of his phone as he tried to burn the image into his brain of Keith's startled face as his nose was pinched between her chubby, purple fingers.

 

“Maybe she just likes you?” Shiro suggested haplessly.

  


***

  


“Sooo, Keith and a baby, huh?” Hunk folded his arms in his lap. Why did Lance feel like he was about to be interrogated? “Pretty cute.”

 

Lance felt a telltale redness burning across his cheeks as he glared furiously at the floor. “Yeah, I mean, uh, sure. The - the baby is a cute baby. Like, I don't _hate_ the sight of a ripped dude holding a baby… you'd have to be evil not to like that.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. Quiznak, he sucked at this. He was really starting to regret leaving Lucky with Keith and Shiro, but Shiro had wanted a word alone with Keith and offered to give him a moment of peace without the baby.

 

“Interesting,” Pidge smirked from the other chair.

 

“Dude, I'm like twice the size of Keith!” Hunk protested, his Russian-mafia-interrogator facade slipping. “Why aren't you going all gooey on me?”

 

Pidge patted his shoulder comfortingly, tutting at Lance like he'd said something heinous. “You're at least three times the size of that little twig,” Pidge agreed solemnly. Lance stuck his tongue out at the pair of them.

 

“Well, sorry for being able to appreciate when someone who is objectively attractive holds a baby. Objectively. Not subjectively, because it is not a personal thing that I may feel towards Keith, but merely the recognition that he doesn't look completely awful. I'm big enough to recognise that now. Except for that god-awful mullet,” he grumbled. All’s fair in love and war, so being a key player in the battle for the universe _and_ being in love meant Lance was perfectly entitled to say that. He was under no obligations to admit to anyone, least of all himself, that Keith's hairstyle was hardly a mullet and had a rugged charm to it besides.

 

“Yeah, buddy, that's it,” Hunk cooed. “Let it all out.”

 

Lance stamped his foot. “That's _it_! There's nothing to let out. I don't know what you two are planning, but I will not be a part in it and I'm leaving. I'm going to find someone normal who won't bully me like you weirdos.”

  
Pidge’s teasing giggle carried after him as he turned on his heel, half mock irritated and half genuinely embarrassed. “That's it, go run it to Keith's arms!” It was followed with general kissing, swooning noises from them both. What did Lance do to deserve such great but also terrible friends?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's difficult to convey through writing without making it sound clunky but when Lance calls either lucky or Keith baby, he means it in the affectionate way that babe is derived from. When Keith calls lucky baby, he means it in the 'this is literally a baby way' - in the same way someone would call an older child 'kid' or maybe call a dog 'dog'. I hope this makes sense lmao. Just something I wanted to make clear without ruining the flow of the actual writing.

“Do you think maybe we should tell people we're together?” Lance said slowly. He smiled widely on the word ‘together’. They hadn't really discussed it, at least not that Keith was aware of, but actions spoke louder than words, right? Too nervous to open a dialogue the morning after they kissed, Keith had opted to speak with his actions instead and Lance had seemed to understand. It was the first time Lance had explicitly verbally referenced their relationship, pet names and constant affection notwithstanding, though they made Keith equally giddy and he was fairly sure they were also implicative of a relationship existing between them.

 

“Did Shiro… say something to you?” he asked nervously. There was no need for Lance to know just how long Keith had been harbouring some sort of feelings towards him. It was a small relief that at least they were actually together. He sent out a small prayer for the alternate universe version of himself that wasn't already with Lance _and_ had Shiro breathing down his neck and making his feelings incredibly obvious to Lance and anyone else who looked their way.

  


“Hunk and Pidge think I have a crush on you.”

  


“Well… Don't you?” Keith pouted. Lance seemed upset by the idea of it, as though it wasn't true. And he said 'think' and not 'know'. 

 

Lance laughed at Keith's kicked puppy expression, tugging the smaller paladin into his lap. Keith made a show of resisting, for both his dignity and the feeling of Lance's strong arms holding him still. Perhaps he had a slightly ulterior motive to forcing the blue paladin to spar with him, but Lance having stronger arms wasn't exactly _hurting_ the safety of the universe.

Keith had gotten his _kiss me_ face down pat, thanks to a lot of trial and error. He had a pretty consistent success ratio now; pouting slightly, tilting his head up, and blinking slowly seemed to make him irresistible to Lance. Either that or he just looked really really desperate and it made Lance take pity on him. Now was another successful attempt. Lance cupped his cheek and tilted his head to bring their lips together, Keith's bed creaking as he shifted.

“Of course I like you,” he said breathlessly as they pulled apart. “Just, not in the way they're thinking! They're like ‘ _aw poor Lance, pining over Mister short, dark, and handsome._ ’ I'm pretty sure Hunk tried to stop me from going on that mission with you in case my brain exploded from proximity to you or something.” He went read, ducking his head into Keith's shoulder. “It's so embarrassingggg.”

 

Keith laughed softly, a little smile quirking on his lips. People tended to think he was was humourless, and he didn't have enough fingers and toes combined to count the amount of comments he'd heard about how he didn't smile. He missed occasional jokes, sure, but he smiled all the _time_!  It just felt weird to be grinning and goofing around when the Universe was at stake and besides, if he laughed so hard he couldn't breathe every time something was a little funny, no one would be able to tell if he was just mildly amused or had just heard the funniest joke of his life.

 

Lance treated every small amusement like it had just made his day, though at this point Keith figured that it was partly because he liked encouraging others by acting like their jokes were funnier than they were. For that reason, Keith usually followed Shiro, not Lance, for his cues on when to laugh. With Shiro being much more emotionally restrained - though he carried it off in a sensitive leader like of way - this tactic sometimes left Keith looking more brooding than he planned. He already had a certain amount of _natural_ brooding, so this impression pushed him over the limit in some people's perspectives.

 

He decided at a young age that he'd rather be silent when everyone else was laughing than laughing when everyone else was silent. If he didn't know whatever to laugh or not, he'd stay quiet. He knew that Lance preferred the opposite because he'd asked, when they'd been lying tangled up in the observatory under the stars. The dramatic backdrop always made Keith strangely emboldened, talking for hours while Lance, for once, remained mostly quiet aside for the occasional fond laugh. Lance bad so many different laughs: the one he used when he and Pidge just played he same prank on Hunk for the third time and he still fell for it; the one Keith had only heard  a few times, when an alien child told an utterly incomprehensible joke and Lance laughed anyway; the one he used when he'd done something stupid and was trying to make it look deliberate so his vulnerability would be passed off as him being obnoxious.

 

Keith's favourite Lance Laugh was the one he usually only got to hear in the observatory, talking late into the night when one or both of them couldn't sleep. Lance, inhibitions weakened by sleeplessness and the impressive vastness before them, with no one to put on a show for, had the most genuine, beautiful laugh. Keith couldn't even attempt to describe the depth and rawness of emotion behind it. He just knew that if he could only hear one sound ever again, it would be that laugh.

 

“Are you okay there? Your eyes are all spacey.”

 

Keith snapped out of his fond remembrance, anchoring himself in the present with Lance's arms around his waist. “Just thinking,” he murmured. “What you're telling me is that you don't like it when your friends tease you for, uh, mooning over me. And you think the way to stop that is to tell them that you've made the mooning official.”

 

“Quiznak,” Lance sighed in realisation, “You're right. That will only make them a thousand times worse.”

  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Lance was asleep. Lucky was crying. No matter how may ways he looked at it, Keith basically had two options; manage to stop a baby from crying, or ruin Lance's first peaceful night's sleep in a week.

 

“Come on, baby,” he hissed, standing over the crib and glaring at her, “be good. Please?”

 

She held her hands out pointedly. _The one night_ , Keith thought grumpily, _that Lance actually fell asleep, and a Lucky decided to cry for the first time ever._ Reluctantly reaching into the crib and lifting her out, Keith begin to rock her gently, the way he'd seen Lance do many times before. Lucky seemed so completely peaceful whenever she was with Lance that even Keith's pale imitation should be enough to shut her up. He conjured an image of Lance holding her in his mind, smiling despite himself. Okay, Lance's rocking was definitely more gentle than Keith was right being right now.

 

By the time Keith had figured out how to use his knees and torso instead of just holding her and shaking her in his arms, she'd slowed her crying into a low grizzle. He moved to put her back in the crib, then hesitated. She was a comforting weight, soft and warm in his arms. Besides, if he put her back in the crib she might start crying again. She was actually no trouble, he thought, watching her suckle on her own thumb as she lay quiet and. The crying and waking up in the night wasn't very nice at all, but now that she'd settled down she wasn't nearly as horrifying as Keith had imagined, yellow eyes and all.

 

“Your eyes are yellow now,” he mumbled to her, poking her squishy cheek gently. “Mine are purple. Sure, Galra are purple, but not their eyes. Which is why I'm definitely not Galra like you. Not even a little bit.”

She sucked her thumb resolutely, meeting his stare with one of her own. She didn't look like she believed him any more than he believed himself. 

“We should stop saying Galra around you. What if that ends up being your first word?”

 

He sat down on the bed, careful not to disturb the mattress as he fit himself beside Lance's sleeping body. His chest rose and fell regularly, his eyelids occasionally fluttering as he breathed against the pillow. Keith put his hand in front of Lance's nose to feel the hot breath against his fingers, creeping closer until he was stroking Lance's soft hair away from his peaceful face. Eventually, the urge to lean down and kiss his cheek was too strong to resist, so he gave in to it.

"How about 'Lance'?" He offered softly, repeating it enough times to try and counteract the number of times they'd said 'Galra' in previous days. "Lance Lance Lance Lance..." It felt so lovely on his tongue, the same word over and over until it felt like that was the only word that existed. It took great restraint to stop saying it, and only because he figured saying it enough times might accidentally wake Lance and then all his baby taming would have been for nothing. 

Lance leaned into the touch of Keith's cool fingers but  didn't wake. Keith pulled away, continuing to run his fingers through Lance's hair, short and yet anything but bristly to the touch.

 

“He's gorgeous isn't he?” he whispered to Lucky, who was staring at him dejectedly. Oh right, he had kind of learnt over to kiss Lance and squashed her with his torso. “Sorry, kid.”

She continued to frown at him. Maybe Keith was imagining it, but she seemed to be annoyed that he wasn't paying enough attention to her. No one was watching, but he was still shy as he lifted his thumb to smooth away the wrinkle in her brow.

 

She liked that, grabbing his thumb tightly in her hands and holding it like a prize. Were human babies this strong? Keith felt something wet - _gross_ , she was sucking his thumb into her mouth. That conveniently reminded him of why he hated babies. All the slime and stickiness and suspicious fluids they were always coated in and determined to spread everywhere.

“Stop it,” he growled, narrowing his eyes at her. She didn't. He looked helplessly at Lance, as though the sleeping boy could help him somehow. “Please?”

 

With his free hand, he gently took Lance's hand and offered that to her instead. Babbling to herself, she took it and grabbed it, spitting out Keith's digit like it suddenly disgusted her.

“Hey! Be gentle,” he warned, sudden protectiveness washing over him as she gripped Lance's hand too tightly. Miraculously, she obliged. Her grip loosened, though she continued staring at Keith as if to say ‘ _if you try and take this hand away from me I will scream so loudly your precious Lance will never sleep again_ ’. The Disney villain edge was probably just Keith projecting onto her chubby-cheeked scowl. Either way, this child  really needed a stuffed toy.

 

Desperately tired, Keith manoeuvred into horizontal position half on top of Lance over the covers. It was awkward to get their without either dropping his weight on Lance and crushing him, or dislodging Lucky hold and making her cry.

“Okay, baby, time to sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith likes to repeat words. It's called echolalia and can be a symptom of disorders like adhd and autism that heavily affect the senses, and to a lesser extent in people with anxiety (often as a comfort mechanism). It can range from something like my personal experience to a small compulsion to repeat (or sometimes write) occasionally words to the inability to ignore the compulsion and continuously repeating words spoken by others. General vocal stimming like talking to yourself or making certain noises, without the element of repeating other people's words, is another similar concept, which I headcanon both Keith and Lance as doing extensively in different ways. 
> 
> (Keith repeating his own words isn't technically echolalia, but it provides the same kind of stimulation.)


	6. Chapter 6

“Go to sleep,” Lance groaned, when he fluttered his eyes open again to see Keith still sitting upright on the edge of the bed between him and Lucky’s cot. Keith was poised protectively over Lance's sleeping form, his hand resting behind him on the bed like a brace, though his gaze moved continually to the sleeping baby like he was checking up on her too. “We’re both fine, you don't need to play guard dog.”

 

“I just-” Waiting patiently for Keith's completed response, Lance watched the emotions change across his face. He didn't seem particularly unhappy or on edge - he was smiling very slightly and the way he sat was open and relaxed. “I was just thinking. Not about anything, really. I was just enjoying how I'm… kind of alone, but I kind of have your company.”

 

To Keith, serenity was just what happened when he wasn't feeling anything else. He didn't seem to ever realise it or remark upon it, didn't notice it the way he recognised more sturdy emotions like anger and love and relief. It was part of the reason why he neglected his relaxation so much. Why would he waste time on feeling and doing  _ nothing _ when he could be making himself stronger? Sure, he needed his time alone, but most of that was spent in the training room, brain more occupied with physical things than any kind of reflection. To him, relaxation was what you did to pass time when you had nothing else to do, not anything important in its own right.  _ Just a state of nothingness _ , he'd called it, when Lance had tried to tell him training for three hours straight was more than enough to deserve a little relaxation. 

 

While Keith avoided peacefulness whenever he could, It was something Lance himself had to be aware of and carefully cultivate to stop hundreds of thoughts rushing in at once as he obsessed over every tiny thing that had ever happened in his life. It took energy for him to clear his mind, to enjoy an Altean soap opera without thinking about how all of these actors were dead now and he was fighting a war against the same thing that had killed them. He liked the way yoga gave him something mundane to concentrate on, while not really putting much strain on his brain. It was incredibly unlikely that this particular hobby would ever rub off on Keith, however. 

 

Instead, Keith was peaceful mostly when he was too tired to do anything else, or he was engaged in conversation that was just involved enough to distract him from the constant threat to everyone he loved. Lance got the sense that he didn't really like being calm, not compared to the adrenaline of being out in a battle. Some part of him enjoyed it, but Keith didn't seem to be aware of that part. The emotions involved seemed pale in hindsight, compared to vibrant memories of winning an improbable battle or being terrified for the life of his friends - Lance could relate to that much at least, but he made the effort to enjoy it in the moment, even if it was nothing exciting on paper. 

 

Lance saw his downtime as something important and deliberate, but he knew Keith felt guilty when he  _ did _ finally allow himself to relax and spent most of it obsessing over what he  _ could _ be doing. That was why Lance saw it as his personal mission: Operation Help Keith Chill Out. 

 

He looked serene now, not staring at Lance like he didn't know what to do with all his feelings like he sometimes did, or neck deep in serious contemplation. Just blank. Every muscle in his face was relaxed except for his tiny smile. Lance loved to see him like that. Often, yo-yoed between hiding his emotions to avoid seeming vulnerable, and overperforming them to try and mimic what everyone else was doing or how he thought he should be feeling. The  _ almost _ neutral expression he wore now, just a tiny smile, showed how comfortable he really was. Lance felt a little dumb for the way his heart swelled over the fact that Keith  _ wasn't _ smiling at him. 

  
  


“Don't stay up too long,” he whispered, snaking his hand into Keith's and squeezing. There was no point trying to convince him to go to sleep and besides, he was happy. As long as he wasn't up worrying by himself, Lance wasn't going to police him. He also wasn't going to let it interrupt his own beauty sleep. The feel of human warmth emitted by Keith's hand comforting enough for Lance to drift off, so he did. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Lance hated babies so, so much. That was his first thought when he woke up, a wall of noise intruding on his unconsciousness so abruptly that his first thought was one of rage. 

“I hate babies,” he whined, rolling out of bed and miraculously not falling over when his feet hit the ground. Lance was pretty confident he was usually an alright person, but get him in the middle of an interrupted sleep cycle and he managed to be both barely capable of sentient thought and the most irritable creature known to man. “¡ _ Cállate, chiquita!  _ Ay _ ,  _ my poor _ ears.”  _ He was just about to break into a string of cursed at the way Lucky noticed him approaching and  _ still _ didn't shut up, but he was suddenly shoved back onto the bed with a muted thud. 

 

“I've got it.” Keith looked annoyingly awake and unconcerned, except for the furrow in his brow when he saw how roughly he'd shoved Lance back onto the bed. He bent his knees, kissing Lance's temple and pushing him more gently into a horizontal position. Unable to tolerate the piercing cries to attend to Lance any more, he lifted Lucky out of her cot, rocking her until she quieted. She'd stopped shifting every time Keith held her now, or at least she was making more subtle changes. “Are you hungry?”

 

Lance laughed sleepily. It wasn't like she was going to turn around and start nodding. She did, Lance noticed through his squinted eyes, start trying to eat Keith's hands. 

“I think she's hungry,” Keith whispered through the darkness. He shifted her into a one-armed hold and used the other hand to shuffle Lance under the blankets, adjusting his head on the pillow like a doll and then hesitating. Lance watched shyness flutter across his face before he bent down and quickly pressed his lips against Lance's. “I'm going to go get her something to eat. Just go back to sleep, babe.” 

 

“Okay,” Lance murmured, his exhausted muscles dragging themselves into a smile he couldn't help. “Love you.” He really, really did. Keith taking care of the baby so Lance could sleep, Keith being so strangely good with her all of a sudden, Keith's sleepy kisses, Keith's shyness over being so brazen with his affections. Suddenly, Lance's irritation at being woken up was completely banished, replaced with a wave of intense appreciation. 

 

He managed to keep his eyes open long enough to watch Keith leave the room, shooting a smile over his shoulder that Lance eagerly returned. In fact, he only didn't blow a kiss because his hand was so physically exhausted that it literally wouldn't move. 

  
  


***

  
  
  


Keith stared at the knife in his hands with a glare strong enough to melt it. Lance had already woken up and gone to eat breakfast; Keith had pretended to be tired from staying up with Lucky in the night so that Lance would leave him to sleep in a little. In reality, he felt perfectly well rested. He just needed a moment.  _ Just a boy and his knife _ , he thought, irrationally amused by the throwaway mental comment. 

 

He was just running through scenarios in his head - like  he always did when he held the knife, but this time the scenarios were not about all the perfectly reasonable explanations for the knife, but about explaining everything to Lance without losing his love and trust forever. Trust the whole reason he was in this situation. Contrary to the amount of secrets he'd kept in his life, Keith hated keeping secrets. Especially from people he loved. No matter how many times Shiro insisted that other people weren't entitled to know about his sexuality or his brain or anything else, he couldn't shake the guilt that overwhelmed him every time he kept anything to himself. 

 

“Buddy?” 

 

Keith started at the knock to the door. It took him a moment to clamp down on everything that sprung up in him screaming about intruders and danger and sending him free-falling into a panic response.  _ It's just Shiro _ , he dryly informed his over-excited brain. Though technically, he  _ was _ his brain… but visualising it that way helped him cope with the way different parts of his mind that seemed determined to clash with each other, all the executive decisions some part of his brain made without the rest of its consent. It wasn't that he ran on instinct so much as that his instinct was much less incorporated with his conscious brain which made it harder to control. 

 

Lance described it as having a rabbit living inside of his brain with him, that jumped on the control panels at random moments. Then he'd wrinkled his nose up as his own metaphor sagged a little, “But, like, the rabbit is also me…” Keith laughed along, understanding despite the shaky visualisation. 

 

“Yeah?” he called back before the pause could drag out too long. The knife was already hidden away under the mattress as soon as he'd heard the first sound. 

 

“You missed breakfast and we haven't caught up in a while,” came the reply. Keith realised after a moment that Shiro was waiting for an invitation or for Keith to appear and stop them from having to talk in half-shouts through the door. His second realisation came when Shiro almost fell onto the floor when he yanked the door open a little suddenly, that he could've said something before doing that. 

  
  


He recovered gracefully, regarding Keith's face with a searching look that made him shy away. “You okay?”

Keith tensed. Of course, Shiro noticed, bumping his shoulder lightly against Keith's. “C’mon, Keith. Take a walk with me.” It wasn't phrased as a question, or an offer, but Keith knew if he really resisted Shiro wouldn't force him to. Knowing this, he nodded and followed his friend meekly. 

 

“What's got your brain tangled up like that?”

 

It wasn't like he could just come out and tell Shiro all of this any more than he could tell Lance. But he was desperate for someone to either help him or at least alleviate his guilt. He took a deep breath. “I have a secret I'm keeping from someone, I guess. And it's not exactly their business but it might affect the way they think about me and I don't want them to find out another way but if they won't like me as much at all after I tell them, then I want to go as long as possible with the way things are before it's ruined.”

 

Oh quiznak, Shiro was giving him A Look. “Is the person Lance, by any chance?” he asked knowingly.

 

“What! How did you know?”

 

Shiro just smiled smugly. “You two have been spending a lot of time together lately. I've seen the way you look at him. I know you trust him a lot.”

 

Keith tried and mostly failed to hide the blush from his cheeks, much to Shiro’s amusement. “I've never told anyone else this thing, but he's done so much for me and I feel like he deserves to know,” he sighed. “I know he's a good person, but it's something that it's kind of hard to be neutral about. It's an issue that's kind of clouded by emotion. It's personal, you know. Especially out here.” He gestured to the space surrounding them. 

 

Shiro made a strangled noise, exasperated but fond. “You don't have to refer to it as an  _ issue _ , Keith. Everyone knows how much you, ahem,  _ trust _ Lance. You mean a lot to him, too, and it would take a lot for him to stop liking you. Did you miss the way he looked when you tied your hair in a ponytail when we were training?” He gave Keith a teasing smile, leaning in close to him as though he wanted to absorb his embarrassment better. 

 

“Shiro, this kind of thing is about more than just aesthetics. That,” he made a strangled noise, having in fact not known that Lance had reacted strongly enough for Shiro to notice and unsure how to feel about it, “Doesn't mean that he'll be okay with everything else about me.”

 

“I wouldn't be so sure,” Shiro insisted firmly. How could be be so sure when he didn't even know the secret Keith was talking about? He spoke with such conviction that Keith couldn't help but feel like he was missing something. “I mean, he really likes your ponytail.”

  
  
  


***

  
  


Keith was still not sure how tying his hair in a ponytail was going to help him tell Lance that he might be descended from evil aliens. Still, he trusted Shiro’s advice and it had never led him wrong before. Usually, he only tied his hair up when the training was really intense, or his head was covered by his helmet anyway. Without the hair surrounding his face, he felt exposed. 

 

That must have been why Lance looked like he'd been electrocuted when Keith appeared for lunch with his hair pulled back from his face in a tiny rabbit tail. He was surprised to see Keith looking so different, having only seen him like that once before. No one else seemed to really notice, but that was just because Lance paid more attention to that kind of detail. Shiro shot Keith a tiny knowing look, while Hunk and Allura both just smiled normally. Coran and Pidge had left empty bowls in their places, but were nowhere to seen. 

“Keith!” Lance recovered quickly, face snapping back into his ever present smile. “Just in time.” 

 

Keith was about to ask what for when Lucky was placed in his arms carefully. Lance smiled softly at him when their arms brushed. The chair beside Lance was empty, and Lance ushered him into it. 

“It's a really awkward angle to feed her from when I hold her,” he explained, twisting in his seat to offer Lucky a spoonful of greenness. She ate it without complaint. Lucky for her, she'd not really experienced any other food, so she didn't have anything with an actual taste to miss. 

 

“Ow! Baby, get off me,” Keith complained. Lucky had abruptly turned her face away from the spoon, having eaten her fill, and crawled up Keith's torso to grab his ponytail tightly. Lance lit up, laughing with Hunk as they both regarded Keith's perturbed expression with amusement, but something softer lay in his expression that was missing in Hunk’s. Keith met his eyes and smiled nervously, widening when Lance  _ beamed _ back at him. He reached out to gently remove the baby's chubby fists from tugging a little too hard on Keith's hair. His fingers lingered, running along the hair tie in circles until Keith felt Hunk’s gaze on them. Lance noticed too, taking his hand back with another earnestly soft smile. 

 

“I'm tired,” Keith complained, his head falling unthinkingly onto Lance's shoulder. He felt Lance's hand in his hair at the nape of his neck where it was  shielded from view. Ideally, he'd be completely ensconced in Lance's arms right now, drinking in that strange, awed affection that seemed to have overtaken him. But friends rested their heads on friends’ shoulders all the time, so he could have this much at least. He liked the way he could feel Lance's shoulders shake when he laughed, in this position. 

 

“Aw, cariño,” Lance cooed, his breath ruffling Keith's hair. Lucky burbled in Keith's arms, prompting Lance to reach out and take her back. Keith found himself missing the feeling of her warmth in his grasp. As a replacement, he snuck his arm behind them, out of view, and felt the warmth of Lance's back rising to greet his palm. Tilting his head, he found Lance gazing down at him with a blush and an unreadable expression. He responded with a smile, what he hoped half devious and half fond. “You were up too late last night,” Lance tutted. “Come lay down, let me make you some tea.”

 

Their tea was really just some synthesised caffeine and other mild stimulants, in hot water mixed with whatever sugar replacements they'd been able to pick up on their travels. It didn't taste particularly amazing, but it definitely made Keith feel more awake. And less anxious about the possibility of falling asleep in Red if Zarkon attacked right now. 

 

He'd almost forgotten anyone else was in the room until Lance handed Lucky to Hunk in order to free his hands. Meekly, Keith let Lance guide him to the couch. The careful way Lance adjusted the pillows around him incensed Keith into sneaking a brief kiss, their faces shielded from Hunk, Allura, and Shiro by the back of the couch. A little thrill ran through him at the exposure. He thought he caught Lance winking at him in his peripheral vision after they pulled apart, but then Lance was gone in a blur, noisily clattering at the counter. 

 

Keith was almost asleep when he heard a gentle, “Move up,” and felt Lance pressing himself up beside him. He heard the sound of a mug of ‘tea’ being set down on the table beside him, but ignored it in favour of tangling his legs together with Lance's and wriggling so he could rest his head on Lance's chest. The lack of space forced Lance to sit on Keith's arms, his weight a warm comfort. It was only second before there were hands in his hair. 

 

“That ponytail,” Lance whispered in his ear, “Makes me want to touch your hair, but also makes it harder to touch. Not fair.” Already starting to fall asleep, Keith's only response was a mild laugh. They stayed tangled up like that in the couch until dark began to descend behind his eyelids. 

  
  


_ “Wake up, g-” _

  
  


_ “Shiro, you  _ **_monster_ ** _! Look how sweet they look. They can miss one training session. It's not like they have enough energy to do any good anyway.” _

  
  


_ “They're like new parents, so exhausted. Keith must have heard Lucky crying from his room and gone to help. He's more selfless than he seems, isn't he?” _

  
  


_ “Yeah, only about Lance…” _

 

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

“Aww, who's a good alien baby?” Hunk cooed, bouncing his leg up and down. The action caused Lucky to wobble up and down, much to her delight, and the air was filled with her raucous screams. Hunk only stopped when his leg started to cramp up and he had to lift her back into his arms. She frowned at him. She had such chubby, rosy cheeks it was hard to believe she wasn't really human. “Wow, I never thought Lance would become a teen mom.”

 

At least he had Keith to help him. Actually no, that was more worrying than reassuring. Keith didn't exactly seem like the nurturing type, but he was always at Lance's side and lately seemed to be holding her just as much as Lance did. Hunk narrowed his eyes at the baby like she was keeping their secrets for them. “You have the weirdest parents, Lucky. You need to tell me what they're up to. If Keith breaks Lance's heart I want you to tell me immediately so I can teach him a lesson.”

 

She stared innocently back at him. “You're right, Keith wouldn't do that. I mean, he wouldn't do it on purpose anyway.” Hunk sighed. “Why does Lance get himself into these things?” It was Lance who'd got them into this whole being the universe’s last hope, flying magic lions in space thing, but even that hadn't been enough for him, apparently. Nope, he had to make everything more complicated than it already was with a really inconvenient crush. Hunk thought he'd raised Lance to be better than this. 

  
  


“You're lucky to have them, though, kiddo. Lance is the most caring person I've ever met. He's like a third parents to his sister’s kids. That's probably why you never cry, because he's already given you what you want before you have the chance. And Keith is,” Hunk paused, grinning. “Well, nothing will hurt you while Keith's around, that's for sure.” Keith was fiercely protective of his teammates, a loyalty Hunk admired and one of the reasons he'd grown so affectionate of the red paladin. It was nice to know someone else would be looking out for Lance if Hunk was ever unavailable. Okay, maybe Pidge was  _ kind _ of right about Hunk being a mom friend. 

 

Still, anyone that wanted to keep Lance safe was a friend of Hunk’s. Over the last few months, Keith's attitude had evolved from just keeping Lance, relative stranger, safe; to keeping Lance, comrade and companion, safe and happy. It was something that couldn't simply be explained away by the fact that Keith recognised Lance's wellbeing directly correlated with the wellbeing of the entire universe, but was a result of genuine affection. 

 

Hunk considered himself and Keith to be friends, good friends even, but he'd known Lance half his life. Lance was his best buddy and he couldn't help but grow defensive at the thought of Keith hurting him. At first, it had been a shock to discover that Keith wasn't actually the jerk he'd seemed at the garrison: he was actually just  _ shy _ , and after the kerberos mission he lost the only human connection he'd ever really had - of course he wasn't going to be a bundle of sunshine. 

 

It wasn't the most unbelievable thing in the entire world that Keith would echo Lance's affection for him, but Hunk just. Wasn't sure. He felt like he'd know if Keith felt that way; surely he'd be as painfully obvious as Lance. Despite how he originally tried to hide it, Keith clearly liked Lance and enjoyed his company. In fact, despite having only really known Shiro when they were first thrown together, he spent much more time with Lance. And he was definitely very gay. Personally, Hunk couldn't see any reason for Keith to  _ not _ be wildly in love with Lance. 

 

But he hadn't said anything to Hunk or Pidge, and Shiro hadn't said anything, and he must've noticed Lance mooning at him like a preteen, so the only logical conclusion was that he just didn't feel that way. Hunk felt a little bit of righteous anger at the fact that that some dusty kid from the desert who didn't seem to understand the concept of hair washing had turned his nose up at Lance, but he couldn't really be mad at Keith for it. Besides, it was just a crush.

 

Lance tripped over himself for every other humanoid creature they encountered and bounced right back when he either struck out or had to be parted (he finally seemed to have forgotten about that whole thing with the mermaid, thank  _ God _ . Hunk’s delicate ears were  _ very _ unhappy with what was inflicted on them after that particular tryst). He even seemed to have given up the thing with Allura, which had turned quickly turned into nothing but playful teasing to try and lighten the mood after the first rejection. What did  _ Keith _ have over a space princess who was also a total badass and totally ethereal? 

 

Until the crush faded, Lance had Hunk and Pidge’s Super Secret Covert Lance Protection Squad to count on. It had fizzled out quickly before, after Keith disappeared from the garrison and was no longer present to attract Lance's attention. Sadly unable to kidnap Keith and hide him in the desert for a few months until Lance forgot about him, Pidge and Hunk had to take a more subtle approach. It mostly consisted of not letting them be alone together, especially not at night, when Lance often got all touchy-feely. Lance would be over the teeny little crush in no time. 

  
  
  
  


***

  
  


“Say ‘ _ Lance _ ’,” Keith repeated tiredly, groaning and throwing his head against the back of the couch. Maybe it was slightly naive of him to think that he'd be able to do this. Lance was such a devoted caretaker and the  _ least _ Lucky could do was show a little gratitude. It would be such an amazing surprise. Keith was so excited to see his face. At least he was, an hour earlier in his entirely fruitless attempt to orchestrate it. “ _ Please _ . Just imagine how happy Lance would be if that was your first word. Don't you want Lance to be happy?” He frowned at he suspiciously. Anyone who didn't want to see Lance's radiant smile as often as possible was definitely completely evil. 

 

“Laaance,” he repeated slowly. “L-A-N-C-E. Lance.” He scrawled the letters in the air in front of him to demonstrate it further. She ignored him. “I think you actually are evil.” He pouted at her. Without admitting it to himself, he'd been examining her behaviour closely, looking for signs. Signs that there was something dark in her just because she was Galra, that Galra genes automatically made her…  _ wrong _ . Some part of him thought idly that if everyone grew to accept  _ her _ , they might be more welcoming to other people with Galra genes. Just theoretically. Keith just didn't like people having incorrect bias, just totally objectively and not-personally, just from a moral standpoint. 

 

“You're an ambassador for all Galra hybrids everywhere,” he told her seriously. “I don't feel like you're taking that seriously enough. Say Lance. Lan-” she reached out a chubby hand, grabbing his nose  _ hard _ as though she wanted to silence him. In case he didn't get the message clearly enough, she fixed him with a flat glare. 

 

“Yeah, I get it,” he grumbled. “You don't want to say Lance. Why are you such a mean baby? Think about Lance's smile when your first word is his name!” She regarded him curiously, her hand not releasing his nose. Technically any baby, even a non alien one, probably wouldn't be inclined care about Keith's boyfriend's stupid blinding smile. It probably didn't mean she was evil. But Lance  _ deserved _ this! He worked so hard to look after her and keep her safe and basically didn't ever sleep even though Keith  _ knew _ how much he cared about his sleep. 

 

“I mean, he's never actually  _ said _ he's my boyfriend but. Dating means boyfriends, right? He calls me pet names, too.” He lifted his hand up to cover his traitorous smile. She tilted her head at him, unimpressed. They did also kind of have a kid together, so. They were almost certainly boyfriends. Kissing plus sharing a bed plus a child definitely meant Keith was allowed to label it. Honestly, he'd always been under the impression that as soon as you were romantically involved with someone you could use all that kind of terminology, but according to the dating reality shows that was actually a big faux pas. 

 

Then again, watching dating reality shows to try and figure out social interaction was probably a faux pas too. He'd gotten into it after Shiro left for the Kerberos mission and he'd been all alone. It was almost like human interaction, but he didn't have to make any effort. He liked how they always did interviews with people after every scene where they said what they  _ really _ meant when they said that thing. There were so many unwritten rules that they all just seemed to  _ know _ and were horrified when they got broken. It made him glad that he'd learnt of these rules from a TV show that couldn't judge him, instead of the hard way when he crossed one of those invisible lines and all that contempt was directed at him. 

 

When he first started watching, Keith had been kind of terrified when they started fighting. He wondered how close to being killed someone would have to get before a cameraman stepped in. Maybe they would just let nature take its course like the wildlife shows he liked. As time wore on and he got more used to the screaming and clawing with scarily long nails and throwing things, he would simply turn the volume down and settle into his ratty beanbag with a confused smile. People thought he was weird, but this girl just threw a  _ lamp _ at someone! It was hard not to laugh. 

 

Objectively, it was awful television; but aside from being  _ really _ addictive, it taught him all kinds of things he'd never have known otherwise, and kept him from going completely insane from isolation. Although he'd never detested anyone or anything more than the contestants on dating reality shows, it was a kind of love-hate relationship. Perhaps fascination-hate relationship would be more accurate. He even caught himself feeling disappointed that he'd never find out who won the fifth season of The Match. 

 

Lance often teased him lightly for this particular special interest. (“I think it's kind of cute, though. It's just weird to imagine that mysterious hipster Keith really likes tacky reality TV. Everything else you're into is like, alien conspiracy theories and hating the government.”) Shiro seemed amused, if a little sad, to learn how Keith had entertained himself without him. And Hunk, while not quite as avid a viewer as Keith, had seen a couple of the shows. Their discussions were strangely satisfying. Pidge once walked in on them talking about it, froze in shock, asked if Keith had been replaced by an evil clone, and promptly burst into peals of laughter, then disappeared, the sound of laughter fading as Pidge got further away but didn't stop laughing. 

 

Keith shook his head to try and shake Lucky’s iron grip from his nose. She didn't let go, and her smug gaze seemed to mock him.  _ Lance isn't here to protect you now, your nose is mine once and for all and there is nothing you can do to stop me! _

 

“Lance is so much better at babies than me,” Keith whined. “I bet you would say my name if he asked you to. And he could get you to stop grabbing my nose. Which is starting to hurt now, by the way… You make him happy. I think he likes having a baby around again. He- his sister was pregnant again when he left. He has a niece on earth now that he's never met. He has like a bazillion nieces and nephews and cousins and whatever it's called when your cousin has kids. He told me all their names but I don't remember any of them.” 

 

He wrinkled up his nose. If stereotypical comedy show characters were to be believed, wasn't he supposed to have a photographic memory? It didn't seem to work that way for Keith. Not unless the information was completely, one hundred percent useless, anyway. He explained this frustration to Lucky, who ignored him steadfastly. 

 

“That's not true, babe. You remembered those rock formations that looked like that radio wave, or whatever, I don't even know, but you helped us find Blue!” 

 

Keith nearly jumped out of his skin. He quickly plastered an accusing glare over his fright, eyeing Lance distrustfully as he sauntered up. 

“How long have you been there?” His attempt at irritation fell flat when Lance leaned in to kiss his cheek. 

 

“Hmm, a few minutes, I guess? I  _ knew _ you liked my pet names!”

 

Keith frowned pathetically at him. It was less of a standoffish gesture and more of a desperate plea for Lance not to tease him for suddenly becoming a ridiculous sappy moron. 

“I was just showing Lucky the observatory. She likes being talked to but it's hard to think of what to say. She's been good, except how she keeps grabbing my nose.”

 

Lance laughed at Keith's pout, running his finger across Keith's bottom lip to smooth it out. Keith shivered. He'd missed Lance's sly grin all day. The team training had been awkward with a baby in the mix, so everyone had been taking turns to let everyone else train. Today had been Hunk’s turn to babysit - Pidge had been formally excused from the duty after a certain tantrum that hadn't come from Lucky - but Keith had mostly been sparring with Shiro and Allura while Lance and Pidge worked on moderations to Blue. It definitely felt like longer than a few hours without seeing him.

 

“Are you being mean to Keith?” Lance chided, shaking his head as he clicked his tongue at her. “Keith can't defend himself against fearsome evil infants, you know, you gotta be nicer to him. He's fragile and defenceless, you gotta be gentle with h-”

 

“ _ Lance _ ,” Keith whined in protest, clapping his hand over Lance's mouth. 

 

Lance cackled at him. Lucky copied him, gargling with amusement as Lance took her from Keith's arms. Great, even the  _ baby  _ was in on it. He glared at them both for good measure, though his actions contradicted his face; he let Lance sling his free arm around his waist and let himself be tugged closer, his head falling to rest on Lance's shoulder. This was one of the few moments when he didn't curse god a thousand times for having the bright idea of making Lance taller than him. The gap in their statures seemed to have been cultivated perfectly so Keith's head fit exactly right on Lance's shoulder. 

 

Lance's hand snuck up his back and found its way to where his hair curled at the nape of his neck. Keith could probably fall asleep to the feeling of Lance's hands fiddling with the longer strands of his hair. 

“You could grow this out,” Lance murmured absently. His voice turned teasing. “Then it wouldn't be a mullet anymore.”

 

Instead of retaliating, Keith just laughed. Lucky was half asleep in Lance's arms, and he'd rather just embrace the sudden calm that had descended on him than bicker over whether he had a mullet. (he didn't.) 

“I could,” he agreed neutrally, turning his face into Lance's neck and leaving an openmouthed kiss against his pulse. Lance smiled and kissed the top of his head in turn. For once, Keith was ignoring the stars and the vast sky outside, he was staring at a the square of Lance's unremarkable shirt that was in his eyeline with his face shoved into Lance's neck. This was definitely the better view. 

  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  


“It's okay, buddy, you can have that seat,” Hunk said, raising his arms passively. He'd made the mistake of taking the seat next to Lance at the dinner table and Keith had  _ not _ been happy about it. 

 

Everyone had recoiled in shock at Keith's outburst. Shiro fixed him with a concerned look and Lance pursed his lips as his eyes flickered to and from Keith repeatedly. As Hunk scurried away, he met Lance's gaze and they shared a confused shrug. Shiro’s eyes didn't leave Keith, who was steadfastly ignoring him. 

 

The dispute started when Keith stumbled in late for breakfast, with sleep mussed hair and Lance's shirt hanging oversized around his shoulders. He immediately made a beeline for Lance and almost sat on Hunk before he realised that the seat beside his boyfriend was taken. He'd snapped at Hunk, uncharacteristically aggressive towards the docile yellow paladin, even though he surrendered his seat to Keith without a fight. 

 

With the seat vacated, he flopped into it and immediately angled himself towards Lance. 

“What's up with you this morning, pollito?” Lance whispered, hand stroking Keith's back reassuringly. Keith melted and relaxed like a cat that had been all bristled up. Lance watched him shrink back into himself with concern. 

 

“Tired,” came Keith's one word reply, followed by a shrug. He'd been awake with Lucky almost all night. Lance had never seen her cry so much, but Keith had insisted it was his turn to be on Lucky duty after Lance had barely slept all week. After the third time she woke up he'd taken her out to the observatory so her cries would stop waking Lance. Lance didn't remember them coming back in so they must've been out there for a while. 

 

Keith's fierce protectiveness of Lance and his sleep schedule was cute, but this grumpy morning gremlin was less cute. Actually, that wasn't true: sleepy, grumpy Keith was also adorable, shrouded in Lance's biggest shirt and rubbing his eyes tiredly. But Lance hated to see him ruffled and none of the other paladins seemed to be enjoying Keith's bad mood at all. His trademark grumpy morning frown was one thing, but attacking  _ Hunk _ of all people was decidedly bad. 

 

He got less cute as the day progressed and he continued to snap at everyone over the smallest offences and refused to leave Lance's side for even a moment. It was flattering and Lance never usually had a problem with Keith's company, but this was extreme. Lance needed to pee, for one thing, but Keith whined and tugged at his sleeve every time he tried to get up. 

“Why don't you go play with your swords, cariño,” Lance suggested quietly. 

 

It was mid afternoon and Keith had yet to even enter the training room. Shiro had given him a pass on their daily sparring because of how exhausted he was. Lance had expected him to argue stubbornly, but he'd just nodded and curled back into the space couch. Shiro looked equally surprised. Keith being a couch potato was decidedly unusual. Shiro had left them alone in the makeshift rec room when he left to train, and they were pressed up together on the couch with Lance running his hands absently through Keith's hair. It was less cuddling and more Keith clinging to Lance everywhere he could while Lance sat mostly upright and stroked his hair. Lance didn't particularly mind it but he was concerned about Keith's abnormal behaviour. 

 

“I only have one sword, Lance,” he grunted, and made no move to get up. 

 

“Maybe you should go back to bed? You're being a little bit of a…” Lance frowned, searching for an appropriately sensitive word, “Grouch. You obviously didn't sleep last night. Why don't you go catch up?”

 

Keith shook his head mutely, shuffling closer to Lance and resting his head in the blue paladin’s lap. Despite his protests, he was asleep no more than five minutes later. His face was relaxed and peaceful in sleep, eyes fluttering behind his eyelids. Lance breathed a sigh of relief. Once be was sure Keith was definitely unconscious, he gathered the smaller paladin in his arms. 

 

He bumped into Hunk and Allura in his way to Keith's room. Both hurried over in shock when they saw Keith hanging limply in Lance's grip. 

“Hey, it's fine!” Lance called out anxiously. “He's just sleeping, he's fine.”

 

They crowded around him, faces shifting from worry to curiosity and amusement. 

“Aw, somebody’s tired,” Hunk laughed, peering at the sleeping paladin. 

 

“He does look rather sweet,” Allura agreed. “You'd never think he's the red paladin of Voltron, seeing him like this.” 

 

Lance curled his arms protectively around his sleeping cargo. “Everyone looks younger when they sleep,” he pointed out. “His mullet hasn't retracted back into his head so as far as I'm concerned, he still looks stupid.” He gazed down at Keith with an expression that was far from derision. “I should get him to bed. He's had a long night, that's why he was being so  uh…”

 

“Unbearable?” Allura suggested mildly. 

 

“Keith's room is the third door,” Hunk added helpfully. 

 

“Right, yeah. I never go in his room so I wouldn't know. Thanks, Hunk,” Lance replied, trying for sincerity to layer over his internal sarcasm. 

 

Getting the door open without dropping Keith was a struggle, but Lance managed it. Keith rolled over and pressed his face into Lance's stomach as he slid lower in Lance's grip. Lance waited with bated breath, but he didn't wake up. The bed was still unmade from this morning, which meant the covers were peeled back and Lance could carefully deposit Keith without having to risk dropping him while he pulled the blankets back. Even in sleep, Keith clung to Lance's shoulders tightly, almost unbalancing Lance when he tried to pull away. Groaning, Lance carefully prised Keith's hold open and stood up. 

 

His eyelashes fluttered against the pillow and a small frown crossed his face, but he stayed asleep. Lance tugged the blankets over him, then stroked his hair down where it was sticking up madly. He quickly kissed Keith's forehead and then the cheek that wasn't buried in the pillow. 

“ _ Que duermas bien, mi tesoro _ .”

  
  
  


***

  
  


It was games night, pioneered by Lance and enthusiastically approved by Allura as paladin bonding time. Unfortunately, Keith was still nowhere to be seen. He'd been napping for a couple of hours, and everyone agreed not to disturb him for the sake of a board game. Lance resisted the urge to be disappointed at his absence, remembering that if they woke Keith up they would probably regret it. He just needed to sleep off his foul mood.

 

Shiro called everyone's attention to the game. It was a makeshift monopoly setup: Pidge had created the board on a holo-screen and Lance had drawn the pieces to create wonky little holograms. It wasn't the same without the little dog. Pidge had plans to laser cut proper, solid pieces and make Lance's holographic renderings redundant, but there hasn't been time yet. Pidge apparently had more important work to get to than designing 3D templates of monopoly pieces to be cut out. They would have to make do with holograms until then: they didn't affect the function of the game but it just wasn't as  _ fun _ . 

 

Everyone chose their pieces - Lance chose the dog before anyone else could. Pidge wanted the top hat, and Shiro didn't understand why anyone would care as he meekly surrendered the piece to the green paladin. 

 

Thankfully, Lucky was slumbering in the corner, her crib dragged here from Keith's room so they would keep an eye on her. She hasn't been an issue so far, but Lance had a bowl of food goo ready for her if she woke up hungry, and Shiro was on nappy duty by virtue of saying ‘not it’ the slowest. Lance felt that he, personally, deserved a break after being on Keith duty all day. At least  _ one _ of the babies on this ship was behaving. 

 

They rolled Pidge’s computer generated dice to decide who'd be the dealer. Everyone groaned when Pidge rolled a six. Hunk and Lance knew from previous experiences at the Garrison that Pidge was kind of a huge cheat where anything competitive was involved

“I just think it's  _ interesting _ how the person who made the dice ends up being the dealer who's in charge of all the money,” Lance pointed out, earning a stuck out tongue from Pidge. 

 

“Guys, come on,” Shiro sighed. 

 

“Fine,” Pidge said, “But I think Lance should get a penalty for calling me a cheat. He should get less money or miss a turn-” 

Shiro’s put out look made them both take pity on him and end their good-natured bickering in favour of starting the game. 

 

They each had a little tablet with all their money and properties on, and they could communicate with each other to pay rent. Lance had to admit it was pretty nifty. He'd found them while he was rummaging around in a cupboard, and they seemed to have come from an old Altean game so all the currency was weird, but it saved Lance from having to cut out hundreds of bills from paper or something. It also meant Lance had to watch his capital falling steadily beside Pidge’s and couldn't even blame it on Pidge sneaking money from the bank. At least he wasn't doing as badly as Shiro. 

 

Hunk gave Lance a sympathetic look when he landed on  _ another _ one of Pidge’s hotels and had to pay what amounted to half of the money he had left. Pidge was next, gleefully skipping over everyone's properties and landing on a community chest that yielded a get out of jail free card. Hunk was next, taking his money for passing go and then losing it again to a utilities bill. Shiro had gotten out already, but he didn't seem to mind.

Little more than five minutes later, Lance was out. Hunk put up a valiant fight against Pidge’s capitalist tyranny, but he didn't last long with Lance gone and Pidge owning about eighty percent of all the properties. Lance tried to figure out how Pidge could've been hacking the virtual dice or the bank, and Pidge gloated that he was just a sore loser. All in all, it was a good bonding session. Even if it had taken five years off Shiro’s life. 

 

After the culmination the game, everyone spread out across the room, too tired to continue playing but too comfortable to head back to their rooms. Lance claimed an ancient looking armchair closest to the door. All the other seats looked much less out of place in the spaceship - this one appeared to be an antique. It was more familiar, recalling the armchairs Lance had sat in on Earth, rather than Hunk and Pidge’s futuristic chairs, which looked like they could be weaponry or vehicles. 

 

Lance whipped his head around at the sound of familiar footsteps. Keith was standing in the doorway, his hair ruffled from sleep. He looked strangely small, somehow. After eyeing him for a moment, Lance realised it was because Keith was wearing his jacket, and it dwarfed him, way too big around the shoulders with the sleeves obscuring his whole arm. No one else noticed his entrance, hovering half asleep in the doorway: Hunk and Pidge were talking amongst themselves and Shiro seemed to have fallen asleep in his chair. Lance offered Keith a tiny smile and beckoned him into the room. 

 

Keith shrugged, hesitantly picking his way over the abandoned monopoly board-screen. He obviously wasn't completely awake yet. His gaze hovered dazedly on Lance with his eyes drooped half shut. Lance shuffled up to make space for him on the arm of the chair, but was stopped by a sudden heavy weight in his lap. Drawing an  _ oof _ from Lance and confused stares from everyone else, Keith had settled between Lance's legs, his chin digging into Lance's collarbone. 

 

Oblivious to Hunk and Pidge’s frantic whispering, Keith made himself comfortable on top of Lance with a small, pleased noise. Lance wanted to draw Keith protectively into his arms, but he didn't want to feed the fire that was Hunk and Pidge. He was also quite distracted fighting the urge to grab Keith's stupid face and kiss the bejesus out of him. Keith just looked up at him through half-lidded eyes, breathing softly against Lance's chest and looking generally like an angel. 

“Nice jacket,” Lance whispered in his ear. 

 

He tugged it closer around himself and nodded contentedly. “You're warm.”

 

Lance laughed into his hair. “And you're very friendly. Don't you think you're being a little obvious?”

 

Keith's head jerked up. “Oh… Hey, guys,” he mumbled, flushing beet red. So he hadn't actually realised that they had company, it seemed. 

 

Hunk whispered something that sounded like, “You think  aliens ate Keith and replaced him with a clone?” Hunk sucked at whispering. 

 

“There were no chairs!” Keith protested. He was still wearing his dumb gloves. Did that mean he'd slept in them? Lance usually forced him to take them off because the very concept of sleeping in gloves offended him. Sleeping in socks was evil. Sleeping in gloves was just incomprehensible. Lance wouldn't mind so much if they weren't the ugliest, stupidest gloves in the entire galaxy. The thin leather offered no kind of protection or warmth, especially not combined with the lack of fingers. That meant they were purely for  _ style _ . What kind of style was fingerless gloves in this day and age! 

 

Lance had zoned out thinking about his hatred for Keith's gloves. Hunk and Keith were still arguing about whether Keith had been replaced with an alien clone. Pidge and Lance shared a bemused glance. 

“You dug yourself a pretty big hole here, idiota,” Lance mumbled, kissing the top of Keith's head and rolling his eyes. He kind of wanted to continue enjoying Hunk’s interrogation of Keith, but the poor red paladin looked increasingly furious. He was trying and failing to come up with an excuse but was thwarted by the simple fact of life: Bros didn't sit on bros’ laps.

 

Unable to deal with it any more, Lance blurted, “He's not an alien clone. He's my boyfriend, morons.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason this was delayed was because I wasn't super happy with the last scene. I still don't love how it turned out, but I didn't wanna delay it any more for you guys. All in all I'm aiming for about 10 chapters, just so you get an idea. It almost certainly won't be less than that but it may be more


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some fluff and loose end tying before the next chapter, which is a big plot one. I am not motivated enough to rework and rewrite all the blade of marmora stuff that the show already did: the next chapter will be post-blade of marmora episode after a small time skip. Also, the update may be delayed by me watching season 3 (;

Hunk began congratulating them in earnest. Lance tried not to feel stung by the fact that Hunk didn't seem to think he had a chance with Keith. Keith, adorably, hid his face shyly in Lance's chest, muttering, “I'm too tired for this.” Lance's hand found itself in Keith's hair immediately, its default position these days for how it calmed them both at once. 

 

“You two,” Pidge interrupted, “Do not touch each other in public. Do not look at each other, do  _ not _ sit on each other in public, don't even come within five metres of each other. I am a  _ child _ , do not soil my precious innocent mind.”

 

If Lance were a braver man, he would've kissed Keith right there, but the very thought made him turn red. Instead, he stuck his tongue out at Pidge and insisted, “I'll do whatever the quiznak I want to do! And you two better keep your mouth shut.” Pidge and Hunk were both good friends that Lance trusted with his life. But he was struck by the sudden thought that the more responsible half of the ship’s crew might not be as happy about this. Shiro probably wouldn't think Lance was good enough for Keith - what if he decided Lance was a distraction and stopped them from seeing each other? Coran seemed harmless, and Lance had grown close to him over the last few months, but he certainly couldn't be trusted not to tell Allura. 

 

Allura and Shiro were both focused singlemindedly on Voltron. If they thought this thing was bad for Voltron, they wouldn't allow it. To Lance, it seemed as simple, and as terrifying, as that. Apparently Pidge didn't think so.

“What, why? Aren't you desperate to prove to everyone you have game, or whatever?”

 

“I don't think Keith even appreciates my game,” Lance sniffed. Keith laughed in agreement, but turned to Lance with the same confused expression. At least he seemed to be doing okay with the revelation, aside from the faint blush colouring his cheeks. “Besides, I don't know if they'll be as accepting as you guys.”

 

“Uh, I'm pretty sure Shiro knows Keith is gay. Right, Keith? We don't know how Altean society was about that but if Allura and Coran don't approve, it's five against two. They love you guys, they'll come around eventually. That's purely on the hypothetical here, which it probably won't come to considering how advanced their society was,” Hunk argued, completely missing the point. The Alteans being homophobic wasn't even something Lance had  _ considered _ . Great, now he had even more to worry about! 

 

“I hadn't even thought about that. I meant more about the idea of two paladins dating in general.”

  
  


“Oh. Oops.”

  
  


Keith was wriggling in Lance's lap, trying to turn himself away so he could tilt his face up and look at the blue paladin seriously. “I trust Shiro,” he muttered. 

 

Pidge and Hunk exchanged a look. “You two should talk. I can't believe I'm passing up on all the gossip, but Hunk and I are going to bed. Tomorrow there will be a full interrogation, just so you know, so you better have your stories ready.” They left in a sleepy bundle of blankets, leaving Lance, Keith, and a quietly snoring Shiro. 

 

“I trust Shiro,” Keith repeated. “I don't know what you think he's going to do, but whatever it is, he won't. He'd want me to be happy and,” Keith paused, looking at something on the ground with a blush across his cheeks as he mumbled, “I am happy.”

 

“I'm a distraction. You're Keith, top of the class, amazing pilot, great fighter… I'm not  _ good enough _ to- Mmphh!” 

 

Keith cut him off, grabbing him roughly by the collar and pressing their faces together in a bruising kiss. He didn't pull away until he ran out of air, and even then he kept his face close to Lance's, his eyes searching his boyfriend’s face seriously. “What the quiznak, Lance!” he exclaimed angrily. “How could you even  _ think _ that? That's so not true that I don't even know what to say to comfort you because there's- there's just no way that's true. No one thinks that, most certainly not Shiro, if that's what you're worried about.” He leaned closer, pressing their noses together in a way that felt more intimate and tender than it should have. 

 

“Yeah, I don't think that at all.” Both boys jumped at Shiro’s voice, scrambling away from each other. “Am I still dreaming?” 

 

“Erm, yes?” Lance tried feebly. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


“Don't go, you're warm.”

 

“Lance, your baby is crying.” Keith continued wriggling out of Lance's octopus grip in earnest. 

 

“What do you mean, my baby? She's everyone’s baby,” Lance protested, his grip weakening around Keith's torso enough for him to get free. Keith escaped to Lucky’s crib and quickly scooped her up in his arms, bouncing her slightly too aggressively. 

 

“Lance,” he hissed, “Can we save this argument for another time when it isn't five o’clock in the space morning? I don't care whose baby she is, but I want the noise to  _ stop _ .” That explained the aggressive rocking, then. Lance wasn't any bigger a fan of crying babies than the next guy, but to Keith it felt like a personal attack on his senses and even admitted that loud noises felt not dissimilar to being stabbed. Lance couldn't help but be impressed with the way he managed to remain so alert and in control during battle scenarios that made Lance want to cover his ears and crawl under Blue's control panel.

 

“You're so awesome,” Lance mumbled sleepily. “You're gonna get some killer undereye bags, though. It'll totally compliment that whole hobo-goth thing you've got going on. I miss Earth, land of cucumber eye masks…”

 

“I'm not a hobo-goth!” Keith's scowl was rather offset by the fact that he was gently rocking a baby in his arms, brushing his fingers over her matching frown. God, Lance loved him so much. Why wasn't he over here already? That was completely unacceptable and Lance took it as a personal offence, yanking hard on his sleeve. It was technically Lance's sleeve, because Keith never took his jacket off. This was  _ exactly _ what Lance was talking about when he said Keith was doing too good a job of existing and it wasn't fair to anyone else. 

 

“She's stopped crying so get back over here,” he pouted. Keith tilted his head, confused. He was used to Lance being much more preoccupied with Lucky’s every little need, yet suddenly he was unabashedly needy enough to abandon his obsessive catering to her. She  _ had _ stopped crying, but she was far from asleep. Knowing her clingy tendencies all too well, Keith looked down at her doubtfully. Lance sighed. “Bring the baby with you, babe.” 

 

Keith nodded, crawling over Lance's legs with Lucky balanced carefully in his arms, managing to settle so that he was half on top of Lance's thighs, head against his chest and the baby nestled tightly between them. She looked as happy as Lance felt, fisting her chubby hand in his shirt as Keith played with her downy hair. 

“See? Now I have both of you,” Lance grinned happily. 

  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Was this what dying felt like? Keith was certain this was how dying felt. 

 

After settling back into bed with Lance and the baby, he hadn't gone back to sleep straight away. Sometimes, often when he was in bed, he got this blinding adrenaline rush out of nowhere that screamed  _ danger!  _ at every small noise and shadow. Out in the desert by himself, when he only had himself and almost-nightly panics, he'd often simply curled up and gone back to sleep, figuring whatever danger there was would either fade into the darkness or consume him. At the time, it hasn't really mattered which to his sleep and adrenaline addled been. 

 

Since the arrival in his life of voltron, things had been different. He suddenly had this duty to keep himself safe, because he wasn't just some washout in a shack anymore; he was the red paladin of voltron. The ship was quiet and safe, with advanced technology that, in the silent vastness of space, meant Keith was rarely subjected to suspicious noises like the clanking pipes and howling coyotes of his desert home. His panic attacks, or fits of paranoia, or whatever they were, weren't as severe or as frequent. He was no longer alone, either, but he would rather let himself be taken by whatever unnamed intruder had his insides tumbling over each other than actually go to anyone else in the middle of the night for comfort. Instead, he usually found a well-lit area and simply paced until his reaction was dulled enough to sleep. 

 

The third and fourth complications came in the form of Lance and Lucky. It was easy enough to surrender himself to the void and cross his fingers that he wasn't actually under threat, but how could he slumber idly if something was threatening someone else, someone he cared for? He couldn't even pace, because that would mean leaving them sleeping and defenceless. 

 

Lance's presence had the helpful effect of combating most of his- his moments before they occurred. If they became so severe that he couldn't breathe, he knew he could wake Lance up for help. It was mostly a much better scenario than calling his own instincts’ bluff alone in the desert. But it sometimes lead to moments like this, Lance's breathing heavy in his ears as he silently panicked, but just not quite enough to bother disturbing Lance with. So he just lay there, miserably staring at the ceiling for hours. 

 

This time, it wasn't the artificial daylight of the ship whirring to life that broke his uneasy existence. It was panting. Then it was muttered Spanish that crescendoed into wails of words Keith didn't recognise punctuated with cries of ‘mamá’ and what Keith recognised as Lance's siblings’ names.

 

His adrenaline-soaked system quickly leapt into action, shaking Lance's shoulders and trying to snap him out of the nightmare. Seeing Lance's face scrunched up in pain made Keith shudder fiercely. He put his lips next to Lance's ear and tried to mumble comforting things, but that was Lance's forte, not his. Sometimes Lance's babbling could be a good thing, after all. He tried to remember the things Lance said to him when he got overwhelmed, a steady stream of ‘you're safe’ and ‘I'm here’ and enough repetitions of his name to draw his attention. 

 

Lance's eyes fluttered open. He looked right at Keith, but his eyes were glazed over and it was almost as though he was staring through him. Keith was carding his hands carefully through Lance's cropped hair when a pair of yellow eyes began to glow in the darkness as wails burst anew through the air, but not from Lance this time. Lance shied away at the baby's loud cries, shaking even harder than before. Lucky was making her heritage very clear as she screamed with all the force of a tiny set of Galra lungs. Keith picked her up quickly and tried to cradle her with his left arm as his other hand stroked through Lance's sweaty hair. 

 

“Be quiet, baby, please,” he begged more than soothed, reminding himself that holding babies was different from fighting, and rocking her harder didn't mean she would be quiet sooner. “Shhh, shhh.”

 

She was still crying and Lance was whimpering in distress. Together they created the most overwhelming of soundscapes. Keith was dizzy with panic, squeezing his eyes shut tightly to try and cut off some of the stimuli that were attacking him. “Europa, Ganymede, Io, Callisto, Adrastea, Amalthea, Iocaste, Lysithea-”

 

“You recite Jupiter's moons to calm down?” Piped a familiar voice. 

 

“Lance!”

Keith let his eyes flutter open. Lance was okay, and if Lance was here, Keith was safe. His breaths were still shaky but he was suddenly grounded in a way no amount of celestial bodies could help him achieve. Lucky’s cries had trailed off into a low grizzle, her skin olive and her face round again in Lance's arms. 

 

“I only recognised Europa,” Lance continued casually. “But that's what it is, right?” He was pale in the darkness, and his grin was shaky, but his cheerful attitude was ever-present in the midst of the most dire situations. There was something insecure in his voice, like he thought Keith would judge him for not knowing that. Keith was more used to being worried people would judge him because he did know it. 

 

“Yeah.” All of his relief tumbled out of him in one syllable, his mouth turning up in a self deprecating half-smile. “I also do all the places where there have been confirmed bigfoot sightings.” He figured he could pass that off as a joke if Lance gave him the Look he'd come to expect to receive from most people when he said things like that. Lance snorted, but there was no Look, just his eyes glittering fondly in the darkness. Holy quiznak, what did Keith do to deserve someone so beautiful and full of light? 

 

“There are no  _ confirmed _ Bigfoot sightings, you adorable geek,” Lance teased. ‘Loser’, ‘weirdo’ and ‘freak’ had vanished inexplicably from his friendly teasing vocabulary after their conversation, in the observatory of course, where Lance remembered how he'd played up to the role of class clown because he'd rather everyone laughed with him that at him. Keith remembered how he'd fretted, eyes downcast, that at some point he'd stopped pretending and let the persona nudge some of his real personality out of the way and squashed itself into him forever. Keith didn't even remember saying much about his own school days, but Lance must have picked something up. He knew as well as anyone how much those words stung after they'd been used for real. Even as a tease, there was always a tiny voice saying, “But what if they really mean it?”

 

Keith was too struck with affection to be able to defend Bigfoot’s honour, so he just pouted. Lance grinned and kissed him slowly and chastely. 

“Ew, sweaty,” Keith said quietly, his smile wide. “I'm so dumb,” he added after a moment, frowning thoughtfully. “I should've helped you, but you ended up helping me.”

 

“And they say I'm not good enough for you,” Lance said, his arm curling tightly around Keith's waist as he pressed a kiss to his dark hair. He paused, though, unsure if he'd misspoken. Keith squeezed Lance's wrist to let him know the remark hadn't fallen foul. “It's not a bank loan,” he said haltingly. “It doesn't work like that. I could list off all the times you've saved my life, but it's not like that anyway. Who cares if one of us has twelve billion GACs and one of us has twelve and half billion. It's just not important. You're okay and I'm okay.”

 

“I think I get it… I wouldn't want you to owe me anything either. Anything I've done for you is because I love you, and I don't want anything in return. It wouldn't be love if you owed it to me,” Keith mumbled, his fingers fluttering over the pulse in Lance's wrist. “Also, literally  _ no one _ but you says you're not good enough for me, Lance.”

 

Lance opened his mouth to say something but Keith quickly covered it with his hand. “No one.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set right after the blade of marmora episode which I didn't want to write and you didn't want to read, so make sure you've seen that episode first obviously! There will be one more chapter after this. After it's done I'll go through and edit the whole work to pick up any typos and that weird thing with the spaces after italics that it always seems to do (on that note, if anyone spots any typos can you let me know where they are in the comments!) thank you so much for everyone who's been reading! Your support means everything <3

“Let me see him!”

 

Lance sprinted ahead of the rest of the team and skidded into Red’s hangar just as she landed. It took all of his willpower not to run towards the entrance hatch just to save a few seconds before he'd see Keith. 

 

Red was protective, but she wouldn't have started attacking the base like that unless something was really wrong. Lance's mind was already awash with images; the door opening to reveal Keith slumped, unconscious in the cockpit; Shiro cradling his bloody body and crying. It was all he could do to stay still wait without his body activating his gag reflex like it sometimes did when his emotions became too overwhelming to contain and desperately tried to escape any way they could. 

 

Keith stepped out behind Shiro and Lance breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't dead, he was unharmed enough to walk. His face was scratched and he was limping, but he seemed no worse off physically than he often was after a fight, if a little more exhausted. But something was definitely  _ wrong _ . Lance couldn't figure out what it was, but Keith looked small and unsure and ragged. The only thing stopping Keith from rushing forward and pulling Keith into his arms was their third, masked companion who instantly dropped to his knees. Keith hovered nervously behind Shiro. He was obviously trying to hide, or shield himself; from what, Lance didn't know. 

 

The new arrival said something to Allura, but it was incomprehensible to Lance in his state. His eyes flickered to Keith, who stared at the ground, and when he looked back the masked stranger had revealed himself. Lance flinched away instinctively: he had the unmistakeable purple skin, yellow eyes,and broad shoulders of the Galra. Forcing himself to stay cool, Lance noticed Keith observing his fear with a flicker of hurt in his purple eyes. Always evasive, he looked away before Lance could catch his eye. 

 

Lance wasn't afraid. Shiro trusted this guy, and Lucky was half Galra and completely unthreatening, so the evidence was in his favour. After getting over the initial shock, Lance cowered more under the Galra’s intense stare and enormous stature than because he was Galra. 

 

Keith didn't so much as look Lance's way again: he remained hunched over and twitching behind Shiro as their new ally spoke to Allura. As soon as the conversation was over and everyone turned to head to the bridge, Keith disappeared down a hallway as fast as he could. 

  
  


***

  
  


Everyone had somehow silently decided not to tell this Blade of Marmora guy about Lucky. Instead, she slept in the crib in the infirmary, and Coran left periodically to check on her. Lance silently ranked at the decision, after all it wasn't all that unlikely that her Galra parent had been a member of The Blade, considering her conception must have required fraternizing with the enemy and didn't seem like something a loyal Galra soldier would do. But when no one else mentioned it, Lance didn't either. They could talk about it later, but it would be wrong of him to make the decision alone. 

 

Ultimately, the most important thing, ahead of any mysteries about where she came from, was that Lucky was safe and happy. Despite not being evil, Kolivan struck Lance as rather stern, perhaps even cold - though since knowing Keith, he'd been hesitant to make that judgement early on. Either way, he didn't seem like he would be the best parent to a young child. Lance felt a wave of protectiveness wash over him when he considered that if Lucky had belonged to a parent of The Blade, they might want to stake a claim to her. That was what they wanted, right? It wasn't like they could continue babysitting a small child for the rest of their future as Voltron. Yet suddenly the thought of giving her up made Lance wince. 

 

There was also another secret in the room but it was Lance who was out of this loop, not Kolivan. It was obvious they were hiding something from him. He figured it was something that happened in the time he spent after Keith disappeared, splintering down a hallway he hadn't explored before in vain search of the red paladin. When he got back to the bridge, everyone looked suddenly stricken and solemn in a way they hadn't when he'd left them five minutes earlier. If he'd just missed out on something, he didn't understand why they wouldn't just fill him in on what happened and move on. 

 

Eventually, Lance had enough of cryptic comments and aborted statements followed by 6 pairs of anxious eyes all landing on him. 

“I'm going to find Keith,” he announced. 

 

Allura shot him a concerned look, Hunk refused to meet his eyes, and Kolivan was frowning at something. That last part could have just been normal fare, though. It was Shiro who stepped forward and followed Lance out into the corridor, clapping a hand on his shoulder once they were out of earshot from everyone else. 

“Lance,” he said carefully, a thoughtful look on his face as though he was still trying to figure out what to say. “Let him be.”

 

Usually receptive to Shiro’s gentle, paternal leadership, Lance shrugged his hand away. “No! Something happened out there and now he's hurting, I can see it. I have to go to him Shiro. Something’s wrong! I can't just leave him to be miserable. You might all be okay with that, but I have to go make sure he's okay.” He frowned, glaring at the black paladin. 

 

“Maybe Keith just needs a moment alone. He's been through a lot just now, and you know how he likes his space,” Shiro argued weakly. 

 

Lance stamped his foot, boot clicking on the floor. Shiro always played it safe; the risk of upsetting Keith by invading his space when he wanted to be alone and sending him into a panic wasn't worth the possibility that he was desperately alone and in need of comfort. Lance knew he meant well, but it was infuriating. Just because Keith wasn't used to having people around who cared about him and rarely, if ever, asked for anything from anyone, didn't mean he didn't need help sometimes just like everyone else. 

“He only tries to go through everything alone because he thinks he has to. I'm just letting him know he's not alone. If he doesn't want me there, I'll leave him in peace.”

 

Shiro searched Lance's face intently, then nodded. “Okay. He doesn't have to talk about it yet unless he wants to.”

Lance didn't stop to complain that Shiro thought he would ever force Keith to talk about it when he didn't want to. Shiro didn't mean it, he was just concerned. With a nod, Lance hurried past him down the first hallway that would eventually lead to Keith's room. 

  
  


It was a surprisingly long walk. Walking alone, noticed it for the first time. The heavy silence and tangle of worry in his gut outweighed his usual upbeat step and the way his brain often deserted his body when he carried out monotonous activities like this, getting lost in his thoughts so deeply that he was surprised how quickly he arrived. Every second that Keith was suffering alone felt like an hour. When Lance finally arrived at Keith's door, it was all he could do not to throw himself against the door in relief. Bracing himself, he knocked light lightly and stepped back. 

 

The door didn't open, and there was no sound from within. “Keith?” he called anxiously. “ _ Nene _ , you in there?”

 

Another silence followed. “I won't try to make you let me in or talk to me, just at least let me know you're okay?” He was met with silence again and groaned, sliding to the floor. If  Keith was going to ignore him, he'd just wait outside so at least Keith wasn't utterly alone, and Lance could be there if he was needed. He folded his legs, head resting against the wall, and shut his eyes. 

 

He couldn't possibly tell how long he was there before he heard Keith's voice. “Lance?”

 

Lance head jerked up when he heard his name. He blinked in confusion. He'd deliberately sat in front of the door as a guard dog so no one could get in or out without going through him. But Keith was outside the door, not inside, so he really hadn't been in the room the whole time. And he looked  _ awful _ . 

 

“Ay, pobrecito. You look awful,” he murmured as he scrambled to his feet. “Where have you been?”

 

“Shower. Have you been sitting outside my door the whole time?”

 

“Yeah,” Lance admitted, shrugging. “I thought you were in there and just ignoring me. I wanted to be here when you needed me.”

 

“Oh…” Keith dropped his hands limply at his sides. He looked solemn and pale and his eyes were just slightly red; considering how long he'd been gone, he’d probably cried in the shower and then waited for the redness to fade before he ventured out. 

 

“Well, I'm here now,” Lance said, trying his hardest to sound casual and neutral, not vulnerable and worried, “ _ Do _ you need me?” He held his arms open wide, explicitly welcoming but still letting Keith decide if he wanted the touch or not. After a small indecisive moment, Keith thudded against Lance's chest, burying his face in Lance's uncomfortable blue paladin suit like it was made of silk. 

 

“I always need you, Lance,” he whispered.

  
  
  


***

  
  


Keith opened his mouth to say it a dozen times over and faltered at the last second each time.  _ The only way this is possible is if Galra blood flows through your veins _ . He opened his mouth to explain as much to Lance then stopped, realising he couldn't just repeat that phrase or it would make no sense. But he had to say something.

 

Lance was sitting on his bed and gazing at him like he was the sun. It made Keith want to squirm. He couldn't lie to someone who looked at him like that. 

“Where's Lucky?” he asked instead, anything to break the guilty silence. 

 

Lance startled, his surprise quickly morphing into an encouraging smile. “She's in the infirmary, just to keep her close but out of the way. It seems like everyone’s hiding her from the Blade of Marmora guy but I guess they just want to be cautious. It's easy to see why they might not trust him.”

 

“Because he's Galra,” Keith realised glumly. 

 

Lance tilted his head, still smiling fondly but with a puzzled squint to his eyes. “Well, I meant more because he's a complete stranger who almost got you killed, judging by Red's reaction, and the last time we trusted a stranger so quickly we almost lost Blue. I guess Allura doesn't seem that fond of him, so you're right there.” He folded his legs underneath him so he could sit fully on the bed and face Keith directly. His legs really were impossibly long. Keith tried not to stare. 

 

“What about you?” Keith blurted. 

 

“Huh?” 

 

“Do you trust him? Even though he's Galra?” Keith repeated. 

 

Lance waved his equally long arms in a vague flourish. “I trusted Ulaz, didn't I? Wait… Is this about Lucky again? I seem to remember we already talked about this before, with Shiro. You know I think she's awesome and I'd never judge her for being part Galra, and I desperately don't want her to grow up thinking she's evil. I think it's very sweet that you're concerned for her, but I don't have a problem with it at all.”

 

“Not Lucky,” Keith said quietly, staring at the bedspread and hoping it would swallow him into a cocoon and never release him. 

 

Lance made a thoughtful noise in the back of this throat, staring at Keith's lips in confusion rather than lust. It was the expression he usually wore when he couldn't quite figure out what someone had said, or if he heard but didn't comprehend the meaning of the words. “What you mean, cariño?” he asked eventually. His accent was all but gone whenever he spoke in English, probably from years at the Garrison (Keith prayed it was simply from naturally picking up how everyone spoke and not any crueller reason) but when he spoke he still often sandwiched smaller words together, sometimes so smoothly that one of the words disappeared.

 

Keith's middle school French teacher often chided her students for speaking her language with what she called English Phlegm; Keith understood that English was regarded as a clunky and sluggish language by those who spoke others. He felt no particular loyalty to it or need to defend it; he wondered what it would have been like if his parents had stuck around to teach him their language. Except technically it was  _ languages _ , because apparently he had a Galra ancestor and they must have a tongue of their own.  _ Probably an ugly guttural language _ , he thought with a frown. Certainly not as beautiful as Lance's. Keith would happily listen to Lance describing a landfill in either of his languages and still find it perfect, but that was besides the point. 

 

“You know that Red started attacking the Base because she sensed I was in danger,” he began awkwardly, figuring it would be easier to tell the whole story - that way the conclusion would be obvious and he couldn't back out. Why had did he always have to be so stupid and proper about everything? Why didn't he just ask Shiro to tell Lance along with everyone else, and then he could've hidden from Lance along with everyone else? Instead he'd told Shiro that this was his own responsibility, and he was here and he had to actually deal with it. “I was hurt, but I could've stopped it. I… I had something that I needed to know. I didn't want to stop without finding out.”

 

Lance's face was unreadable, lips slightly parted. “What could you possibly have wanted to know that you could only find out by almost getting yourself killed at the hands of a mysterious alien rebel group?” he groaned. 

 

“Do you know what the Blade of Marmora’s emblem looks like?” Keith asked cautiously. Lance shrugged in reply - Keith tried not to be frustrated. After all, Lance probably hadn't ever seen it, and even if he had, he had no reason to commit it to memory. “Do you tenner remember the knife Ulaz had? It was dark, with purples symbols on it.”

 

Lance shook his head. “I didn't really notice it… I remember his glowy purple armour, though.”

 

Keith turned away abruptly, fumbling under the mattress for the knife he'd stowed there as soon as he returned. It was only when he turned back and caught Lance's forlorn expression that he realised how it looked, turning away from Lance in disappointment because of his memory issues. He smiled hesitantly to reassure him. The smile returned to Lance's face too when he saw Keith's unfolded palm with the shrunken knife nestled in it and understood why he'd turned away. That smile quickly fell when he looked closer at the clearly alien knife. 

“Keith, what is this? How did you get it?”

 

“I'm part Galra.”

 

“ _ WHAT _ ?” Lance shrieked, scrambling to his feet. Keith grimaced. What was that he'd just been thinking about easing into it? 

 

“It's okay. I understand if you need some time,” he said robotically, turning away. Lance didn't have personal reasons to hate the Galra like Allura, Shiro, Coran and Pidge, but he certainly wasn't fond of them. “I understand if-”

 

“Keith,  _ no _ !” Lance lifted his hand slowly to Keith's face like he was approaching a stray dog, his fingers curling around Keith's chin and gently tugging his face back around. “Baby, are you crying?”

 

Keith bit his lip, teeth digging in hard enough to draw blood. It wasn't crying unless you admitted it. Otherwise he could just have been struck with a sudden allergy attack. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, taking a deep breath, and when he opened them again Lance was staring at him with an expression of pure concern. He was like a ragdoll as Lance tugged the crying boy into his lap; not resisting but not confident enough to move himself. Lance's warm was familiar and grounding and he clung to it, trying to breathe in as much of Lance's smell as he could as he clung to his boyfriend shakily. He felt Lance's hand come up to wipe away the tears under Keith's eyes. The tenderness of his fingers and his expression only made Keith cry harder, which in turn made Lance look stricken. Keith wanted to cry even harder at Lance's round, worried eyes. Instead, he just buried his face in Lance's jacket and tried not to tremble. 

 

“Will you tell me why you're crying?” Lance murmured softly. “I can't help unless I know.” The familiarity of the phrase startled Keith, for it was one Lance often had to use on him, whenever Keith became agitated and refused to tell anyone why. 

 

“I just found out I'm part alien,” he whispered, “And not just that, part enemy  alien. I know they aren't  _ all _ bad but most of them aren't exactly good! When you think Galra, you think bad guys. And… When anyone looks at me now, that's all they'll think.”

 

“ _ I _ don't think that,” Lance said placidly. His hand rubbed comforting circles between Keith's shoulder blades. Something in Keith was desperate to prove him wrong, to spot a tell in his posture or his voice that proved that he was secretly uncomfortable, that he thought differently now. 

 

Keith couldn't find one. The only signs were Lance's fond smile, honest eyes, and the way he was gently cradling Keith as though he were something delicate and special. 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry for the delay! the first free time I get and I'm totally ill... which brings me to the increased chapter count. as soon as I started writing this chapter I realised there was going to have to be an epilogue. but I also realised it was going to be quite long if I got all the way to the pre-end end in the chapter. and basically... I'm too sick to finish it right now! I didn't want to delay the update any longer, so I split the penultimate chapter into two halves. (sorry for any errors, I'm just dying over here!)

“ _ Baby _ ,” Lance said, his voice a balance of soft and stern, “You can't sleep in your clothes.”

 

Keith peeked out over the top of the blanket he was currently commandeering from Lance. He was half certain Lance was only saying that to get him out of the bed, in which time the blue paladin would have stolen the blanket and inextricably cocooned himself in it. There was also the low anxiety that _always_ plagued him when he went to sleep - _what if something happens while I'm asleep and I can't stop_ _it?_ \- but racketed up to ten by the stress of that day. Sleeping in his clothes was a habit he'd mostly grown out of since he left the Garrison and didn't have to wake up earlier than he planned to, but it helped him feel in control and gave him a small comfort that he'd be prepared if anything _did_ happen. He didn't want to worry Lance even more, and there were already plenty of reasons for them both to be anxious, so he didn't explain any of that. 

 

“Yes I can,” he muttered sullenly. Feeling Lance's fingers poke teasingly at his babyish pout, he scrunched his eyes up - unsure whether to melt or sulk some more. It was decided for him when Lance curled his fingers in his boyfriend's hair and kissed the side of his face just beside his ear. 

 

“You're not sleeping with that stupid tool belt on,” Lance said firmly. “Change.”

 

Keith fluttered his eyelashes, sighing as he shed the comfort of his blankets. “Fine. But I want your jacket.”

 

As Keith started undoing his belt, he felt Lance’s fingers slide into his hair. He couldn’t help but tip his head back into the touch, until he was halfway to a backbend; upside-down and smiling up at Lance. His hand retreated in order to remove his jacket. He shrugged out of it fluidly and handed it to Keith with a knowing look. 

“Maybe one day you’ll actually sleep without any impractical clothing at  _ all _ ,” Lance teased. His expression said that he very much doubted that would ever happen and didn’t really mind. 

 

Lucky was nowhere to be seen - carted off by Hunk. Keith wasn’t sure if it was to protect him from her disruptive sleep schedule after his rough day, or to protect Lucky from some supposed threat that he posed. It was odd, he thought, how everyone was much more open to Galra blood when it announced itself immediately. They’d taken easily to charming Lucky, and had already warily accepted Kolivan: so far, Allura had spoken to the Galra stranger more times today than she had even so much as looked at Keith. The thought that they didn’t seem to trust him with Lucky was the one on his mind as he drifted off to sleep, causing him to fall asleep with a frown frozen on his face.

  
  


***

  
  


Lance  _ hated _ seeing Keith distressed. He’d yet to divulge what exactly had happened at the Blade of Marmora, but it had obviously upset him. After the third time his thrashing awoke Lance, the blue paladin gave up trying to sleep in exchange for keeping watch over Keith instead. 

 

He’d had bad dreams before, but this was the first time Lance had ever seen him have such intense nightmares. He called out for his father often, and kept repeating, “Dad, is she coming? I can’t wait any longer!” Sweat clung to every inch of his skin as he tossed and turned and sobbed. “I can’t wait for her!” he shrieked, seemingly furious. 

 

That was the last straw for Lance, who desperately wanted to let Keith catch up on a little sleep but couldn’t let him suffer any longer. It was an impossible choice, between depriving him of his sleep and letting him remain in his nightmare-world. Lance subdued his anger at whoever had put his boyfriend through such distress, aware that an outburst when they met again with Kolivan in the morning would be counterintuitive to any kind of peace - for Keith or anyone else. 

 

“Wake up,  _ nene _ ,” Lance whispered earnestly. He gently ran his index finger along Keith’s part, following it across his head until it disappeared into an overgrown waterfall of black tangles at the back of his head. Keith’s hair was becoming like a surrogate safety blanket, and Lance was almost certain Keith felt similarly comforted when Lance touched it. Hopefully it would help ease the vertigo of waking up from a nightmare in the dark of his space bedroom.

 

His eyes shot open. He adjusted to reality in seconds, taking in Lance’s face and the blinking night-light, which Lance now kept in his boyfriend’s room, like an old pro. By now, he almost was: it was his fourth awakening in as many hours. Lance tried to broadcast calm and reassuring vibes to Keith through his tired smile. It didn’t work too well. He was never very good at controlling his face when he was tired.

“Sorry for waking you up again,” Keith said tiredly. His head lifted up for a moment and then flopped back onto the pillow, defeated.

 

“It’s okay,” Lance answered; ‘I don’t mind’ was a lie and ‘actually I’ve already been awake making sure you’re okay for the last hour’ probably wouldn’t make Keith feel any better. It was okay though, and Lance would do it every night for the rest of his life if Keith needed him to. He’d rather not, though.   

  
  


That wasn’t the last time Keith woke up that night, but Lance was with him every single time. He wished there was some way to help him, but he simply had to accept that Keith was suffering right now and it was inescapable. It was a shortcoming he and Keith shared - they were always looking for a solution even when there wasn’t one, always determined that every problem had a simple key that was somewhere right under their noses that would solve everything instantly if they only looked hard enough. There wasn’t though. What was the key to reliving a lifetime of abandonment  _ and _ finding out that you weren’t who you thought you were in a way that half of your friends might hate you for? There was nothing easy or fast about everything Keith had to come to terms with.

 

Lance might not be a cure-all for Keith’s newfound trauma - or the recycled old stuff - but he was certainly a catalyst for him being all right again, and he was determined not to leave the red paladin’s side until he was ready to be alone again. Until he learned how to be alone without being lonely and desperate for a love he couldn’t even remember. Lance was determined to begin paying the debt of love Keith had been owed by the Universe ever since his own mother vanished from his life. In a more serious part of his brain, he knew that wasn’t exactly how things worked. But in the same part of his brain that controlled the beating of his heart, he saw a boy who’d lost everything and wanted to give it all back.

 

***

 

Keith wondered if it was possible that a boa constrictor had somehow stowed away from Earth with them. A talking boa constrictor.

“Ready for your big day, sweetie?” chirped the faceless pressure around Keith’s torso. “You have a lot of explaining to do to a lot of people. I’d protect you if I could, babe, but I think Shiro wants to hear it from your mouth that I haven’t mind-controlled you into dating me.”

 

“I thought I was the one mind-controlling you?” Keith said blearily, remembering a conversation that seemed like years ago, now.

 

“You can’t mind control me if you don’t open your eyes. Hunk warned me about you - your power is in those huuuge, adorable eyes.” Something wet was pressed against Keith’s firmly closed eyelid. “What lash serum do you use, baby?”

 

“What the quiznak is a _ lash serum _ ?”

 

“Sometimes, I'm so disappointed in you. I don't know how I'm surprised, given that you told me you'd never used conditioner before,” Lance groaned, so much genuine distress in his voice that Keith almost wanted to sit up and comfort him. Until he remembered that Lance was upset over hair products again and mashed his face uncaringly back into his blankets. “Now get out of bed, you poor excuse for a human being, before-” Lance stopped, mouth slamming shut cartoonishly. 

 

Keith turned around to look behind himself in case something shocking was happening behind there that was causing Lance to look so upset. The wall behind was blank and unthreatening as ever: Lance was definitely looking at him. He was about to ask for clarity when he considered the exact wording of Lance's jibe. The events of the day before swam to focus at the forefront of his mind and reminded him helpfully that he actually  _ was _ a poor excuse for a human being in the most literal sense. 

 

“I didn’t mean it like that, oh god, Keith, you know I don’t think that! I say stuff like that to Pidge and Hunk all the _ time _ , I don’t-”

  
  


“It’s fine,” Keith shrugged. “I mean. It’s true…” He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be upset or not. It seemed pretty obvious that Lance didn’t think that; it was clearly evidenced by the dark rings around his eyes, which got there because he hardly slept all night, keeping watch over Keith as he slept unhappily. Then again, Lance never seemed to have any inhibitions about aliens. He didn’t want Lance to think of him as an alien, but it was better than hating him any day.  _ That’s not what Lance meant _ , he reminded himself. It was a poorly chosen turn of phrase, sure, but Lance was the master of those and accidentally offended every second alien race they met. It didn’t mean any ill intent on Lance’s part. Still, it was odd to think of himself as an alien. He always thought of himself as a little alien, but that was very different from being _ An Alien _ . In an odd way, it was almost gratifying - it knotted up more loose ends in Keith’s life than he even knew existed. That was a small silver lining in the face of the possible hatred of his teammates, and friends, and the huge identity crisis that came with suddenly finding out his ancestors were the same people who ravaged the entire galaxy 

 

“What are you talking about?” Lance screeched, causing Keith to wince away. “It’s  _ not _ true!”

 

Keith opened his mouth to protest in favour of logic, and was interrupted by Lance’s arm sneaking around his waist. Automatically, he wiggled under the touch. After Lance’s grip quickly shifted up higher, away from the vulnerable flesh of his stomach to settle just under his ribs, he relaxed into the touch. His head settled into the curve between Lance’s neck and shoulders, and breathed in the warm of Lance’s solid body pressed up against him.

 

“You might not be one hundred percent, organic homo-sapien,” Lance murmured in his ear, “But you’re definitely human - and a great one, at that. Now get up, because everyone wants a piece of us right now and I’m not facing the hordes alone.”

 

Right. Lance and Keith had just come out, as it were, to their fellow paladins, when Ulaz had broken into the ship and caused everyone to become way too preoccupied to have time for interrogations. It was a blessed reprieve when it came, but now Keith had to face everyone’s questions about his newfound Galra heritage  _ and  _ his not-so-newfound feelings for Lance.

 

***

 

Lance hadn’t expected Keith to be quite so clingy. On any other day, the thought of being so dependent on Lance would’ve surely been mortifying to the red paladin, particularly with it being such a public display. On this day, however, Keith apparently preferred the comforting embarrassment of refusing to leave Lance’s side to the questions and tension of being alone amongst everyone else.

 

His palm was sweaty in Lance’s and he swung his head frantically as everyone crowded around him… everyone but Allura. A steady fury was growing in Lance’s chest; a sharpened, writhing thing pointed directly at the girl he had grown to see as a sister. There was still chipped white polish on her fingers, put there by Lance’s careful hands. Allura was family to him, but how _ dare  _ she treat Keith this way. Frowning pointedly at her, he gripped Keith’s hand tighter. Lance was a little worried, because this was exactly the kind of mood he was in whenever he said things he ended up regretting for weeks after. His protective streak was out in full force, standing between Keith and any judgemental glares like a hissing, spitting cat.

 

Hunk, cradling a sleep-docile Lucky, eyed them cagily as they entered the kitchen together, evidently coming from the same room. Lance was shocked at the defensiveness he felt towards his own best friend. “Keith had some trouble sleeping,” he said measuredly, willing himself to stay calm. “I was helping him with his nightmares.”

 

Of course, they’d been emerging from the same room for weeks now, but had miraculously never been caught - thanks to Keith’s existing private nature repelling anyone from coming anywhere near his room. Usually, there were more careful. Yet today Keith hadn’t been willing to let go of Lance’s hand or tear himself from his boyfriend’s side, and Lance hadn’t argued. It didn’t help that certain teammates were now much more alert and aware of the whole scenario, and therefore much more likely to notice and connect clues like these.

 

“So, the Blade of Marmora, huh?” Hunk said awkwardly. That was definitely one way to address the elephant in the room. The reaction was instantaneous: Keith tensed against Lance’s side, and Allura visibly flinched. Aside from those two drama queens, Pidge, Shiro, and Coran, were in various states of embarrassed surprise. No-one missed the way Keith turned to Lance for help with a desperate edge to his expression. Alternating knowing and surprised looks were scattered through everyone’s face. 

 

“He’s a paladin of voltron and he’s- he’s  _ mostly  _ human,” Lance seethed, “And he’s the most loyal person I’ve ever met, so if anyone has anything to say against him, they can say it against me too.” Even Keith looked taken aback. Did he not realise that Lance meant it when he said he’d fight for Keith? He hoped one day Keith would get to a place where he’d be surprised if no-one stood up for even, rather than the mild shock that always showed on his face whenever he wasn’t immediately abandoned and anyone showed that they did actually care about him.

 

Lance took Lucky from Hunk, handing her to Keith, who made another surprised noise but took the baby without complaint. Thankfully, she decided not to further complicate things by turning Galra at that particular moment. “Where’s Kolivan?” he asked, when no one said anything else. Out of the corner of his eye, he stole a fond glance at where Keith was rocking Lucky gently, the way he’d taken a while to get the hang of, but was incredible now that he understood. His mouth was shaping inaudible nonsense as her as he nodded and beamed at her, lifting her in front of his face to rub their noses together. With a start, Lance realised just how attached Keith was to Lucky… how attached they all were. He didn’t remember when she stopped being another mission and started being a part of their little team, but somehow she’d wormed her way into everyone’s hearts.

 

Shiro was watching Lance watch Keith with a small, amused smile. At least Shiro wouldn’t abandon Keith, Lance was almost certain of that: he’d been the first one to trust Ulaz, after all, and he’d known Keith for longer than any of them.

 

“Kolivan will be meeting us at the bridge once we have all eaten to explain the plan.” Allura snapped. “We need to focus on the mission, not on… gossip.”

 

Everyone was quickly silenced, suddenly focused on eating their food goo. No one looked at Keith. Lance groaned quietly. What was he supposed to do when two members of their accidental space family suddenly couldn’t stand each other, and he was the one right in the middle?

 

***

 

“It’ll be okay, buddy…” Hunk tried to be reassuring. Keith’s poisonous glare was definitive proof of his failure. He was, to say the least, incredibly unhappy about being sent on a mission away from Lance.

 

“Yeah,  _ he’ll  _ be okay,” Lance joined in, “But what about  _ me _ ?! I was counting on not having to face Pidge’s terrifying interrogation alone,  _ and  _ now Shiro will definitely corner me for a concerned dad talk. You guys can’t leave me alone with them,” he pleaded.

 

Keith laughed, rubbing his knuckles along the side of Lance’s face. Hunk felt like he was intruding on the intimacy between them, the way Lance smiled at Keith despite obviously using all his willpower to try and resist. He couldn’t believe how long they’d successfully managed to hide all that affection from everyone else, the sneaky little devils. In light of his and Keith’s immediate assignment, he’d been treated to a quick rundown from Lance (Keith was there too, but he hardly said anything. He seemed content to lean against the wall with his head dropped on Lance’s shoulder, nodding or murmuring along at opportune moments. They were the absolute picture of domesticity, a jarring contrast against their surroundings.) of everything that had happened without him knowing.

“Shiro wouldn’t do that to you, Lance,” he insisted - Lance didn’t look so sure.

 

“You’re the only person I can trust, Hunk,” Lance whined, flopping against his friend with a put-upon sigh. His tone turned serious, and he straightened up to meet Hunk’s gaze with an earnest frown. “You’re a good friend. To me  _ and  _ Keith. Between me and Keith, and this whole Galra business, you’re the only person who hasn’t, like, made a huge deal about it.”

 

Hunk shrugged, but he couldn’t deny the warmth that rushed through him. It felt like such a humble thing, but a good friend was all he ever wanted to be. It was even how he got into this whole mess in the first place, tagging along with Lance because of his proposed team bonding exercise. He wouldn’t trade this for anything, though, not when the universe needed him.

 

Keith was watching Lance flop against Hunk like a dying fish, and there was something decidedly territorial flashing in his eyes. That, Hunk decided, was his cue to go and wait in his lion for Lance and Keith to say their goodbyes.

 

A little spying, he thought as he pulled up a camera screen, wouldn’t hurt. _ It’s what Pidge would have wanted. _

 

Keith had his face buried in Lance’s chest, his cheek to the blue paladin’s collar bone. “I don’t want to go,” he whined petulantly. “I can’t sleep without you anymore.” Hunk decided that was the least Keith-like thing he’d ever heard.

 

“Then you’ll just have to be back soon,” Lance answered easily, kissing the top of Keith’s head.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance has a lot of explaining to do, and the Blade of Marmora have insight to offer on more than just Lucky.

So close. Lance was so, so tantalisingly close to managing a whole day of avoiding being alone with Shiro. His eyes widened as they registered Shiro rounding the corridor - but it was already too late.  
“Lance, there you are! I was wondering if we could talk?” he said cheerfully, smiling as he rounded on the helpless blue paladin and stopped him from escaping the nursery.

 

Lance glared down at the baby in his arms, as though he could telepathically tell her to have a convenient accident so he had an excuse to leave. When she failed to oblige, he looked up at Shiro with a forced smile. “Of course,” he said faux-brightly. “What's up?”

 

Shiro dithered awkwardly. At least he was suffering as much as Lance was. “I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay in- in light of all this. It must be hard for you, being in the middle of everything.” He leaned forward and tentatively ruffled the soft hair on Lucky’s head  

 

“I'm fine,” Lance said sharply. “It's not about me. I just want to make sure Keith is okay. And Lucky.” He gazed down at the baby in his arms with a smile tugging at his unwilling lips. It would be selfish of him to focus on how he felt when there was a baby to be looked after and a Keith who needed him. _If only Allura knew_ _that_ , he thought coldly. It was odd to feel such bitterness welling inside him, aimed at Allura of all people. He hoped desperately that she would stop reacting so harshly to Keith, stop making him choose sides between two people he loved. She was still grieving, he reasoned, and she was in shock over Keith’s revealed identity. She would understand eventually.

 

Shiro made an exasperated noise. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he sighed.

 

Lance snapped out of his thoughts enough to understand that Shiro wanted to talk to him about Keith. It wasn’t like he didn’t know this was coming, but he still bristled. “I get it, okay. Keith is… well, he’s _Keith_. Stupidly talented, ruggedly good-looking, noble red paladin. And I’m, what, the weird kid who scraped his way through every simulator and ended up in the blue lion by chance. But I-” Lance swallowed, trying to decide how good of an idea it was to admit to Shiro that he _loved_ Keith a ridiculous amount, “ _Love_ him. I know that’s not enough and I know I-”

 

A hand landed on Lance’s shoulder. Shiro gave him a weary look. “That’s sweet, Lance, but it’s not what I wanted to talk about. You and Keith can, uh. I- you- I’m fine with… with it.”

 

Using his hand to cover his amusement at the way Shiro floundered awkwardly, Lance suggested, “Us dating?”

 

Shiro’s obvious discomfort was hilarious, but Lance would’ve felt exactly the same way if he was ever forced to talk to Shiro about _his_ dating life. They definitely weren’t that kind of friends; it felt more like he was being lectured by his boyfriend’s older brother - which he sort of was.

 

“Yes,” Shiro said, quickly moving on. “That's exactly what I was talking about, though. You can be so emotionally self-sacrificing, so. I just wanted you to know that it's okay for you to have feelings about this too, _even_ if it's worse for Keith. You can always talk to any of us if you need to. Keith understands that.”

 

Lance lifted his head, suddenly alert as the cogs turned in his head. Eyeing Shiro suspiciously, he tried to sound as betrayed as possible. “Did Keith put you up to this?”

 

Looking like he found that a very amusing thought indeed, Shiro shook his head. “He cares about you so much, but he doesn't always notice when you aren't doing so well yourself. Sometimes you just have to tell him things, because he might not get it if you're trying to subtly dance around it,” he said solemnly. “He's always making an effort for you, but it's not fair to expect him to notice everything if you don't tell him. And if you're actually trying to hide it and take advantage of the fact that he won't notice, then that isn't fair, Lance. He deserves to know how you feel. Think about how you'd feel if Keith was always hiding his… That's a bad example because he does do that. All the time.”

 

Lance would be an idiot if he didn't know any that by now, but it was helpful to hear it out loud from someone else. It really wasn't fair to hide his emotions from Keith and then get upset when Keith did the same. Hiding how he really felt wasn't really helping anyone at all, and in the long run it could easily drive a wedge between them. The first step would probably be admiring everything to himself.

 

“Thanks, Shiro,” Lance said brightly, feeling immensely relieved at how not-terrible their conversation was. He'd been expecting passive aggressive and the implication that he wasn't good enough - instead he got a supportive Shiro who initiated the conversation in the first place because he was concerned about Lance's feelings, not Keith's. Lance felt guilty for the way he'd misjudged Shiro.

 

“And Lance?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“He's like a brother to me and he adores you. If you hurt him, you won’t make it back to Earth with the same face.” Shiro was blushing, like he couldn’t believe he’d actually said that. Lance had been expecting it all day but he couldn’t have imagined just how gloriously awkward it would be in reality.

 

“I won’t,” he said seriously, despite his hidden amusement at Shiro’s awkward protectiveness. “It’s good to know he always has someone who’ll stand up for him. You’re a great friend, man.”

  
  


***

 

After his talk with Shiro, Pidge came to tell Lance that someone who was currently slightly less endeared to Keith wanted ‘a word’ with him. Pidge shot Lance a quick glance that said ‘lucky escape, but I _will_ get you alone and embarrass you eventually’ and left.

 

As he wandered languidly over to the bridge, Lance had an inkling about exactly why Allura wanted to talk to him and him alone - or rather, _who_ she wanted to talk about. He was in no rush for that conversation to happen, so he took his time. He mulled over his conversation with Shiro, already practising how he was going to recount the story to Keith in his head. Secretly, though, he felt a huge pocket of warmth in his chest. Granted, it was squeezed in right beside the enormous tangle of anxiety and self doubt, but it was definitely there. The fact that his childhood _idol_ actually cared about how _he_ felt was almost too good to be true. One day he’d love to actually be a vital part of the team, too, but just the fact that someone cared about him felt pretty sweet. Despite having grown up in a vocally supportive extended family, he was always surprised whenever it was made obvious that someone actually cared about him. He was still getting over the shock of the fact that Keith not only didn’t think he was an annoying moron, but also actually liked him (a lot).

 

He certainly wasn’t expecting to discover that Shiro worried about him other than because he was the blue paladin and couldn’t let the side down. (Or because he was ‘the guy my honorary little brother pines after’.) Speaking of which, Lance really needed to interrogate Shiro about that and find out all of Keith’s most embarrassing stories.

 

Lance looked up, realising his feet had finished the journey for him while his mind was distracted and Allura was gazing in his direction, hands clasped in front of her. Her face looked less stor

 

“Princess,” he said dully. As much as he was utterly unenthusiastic to hear about Allura’s sudden dislike of the boy he loved, Lance wasn’t keen for a confrontation either. She was grieving for her entire family, her entire _planet_ , and in shock - and Keith was just unlucky enough to have gotten tangled up in Zarkon’s mess. It wasn’t like she had really done anything wrong, either: she was uncharacteristically cool with Keith, but she hadn’t said anything or even obstructed their alliance with Kolivan.

 

Mostly, he was anxious that she was going to make him to choose sides, or say something that would force him to confront her to defend Keith’s honour. He was afraid of what would happen if she had time to process things and still didn’t want anything to do with Keith. Lance didn’t want to lose _either_ of them.

 

“I think it’s time we tell Kolivan about Lucky. They could have invaluable information about where she came from and it isn’t fair of us not to look into that. We could find out if there are others like her, which is certainly… something we should be investigating, now,” was what Allura said instead. Lance’s mouth, which had opened ready to beg her not to understand, slammed shut. First Shiro, now Allura. Was he really such an unfair judge of his own friends?

 

“You… do?” he said dumbly.

 

“Yes, Lance. We have no reason not to trust them any more; they have more than earned our respect. I simply wanted to check with you, as I know you are very attached to her and you’ve been the one to do all the work involved with looking after her, which I think merits my asking you.” It was only when she folded her arms in her lap and smiled wanly that Lance realised just how terrible she looked. Her dark skin had a sickly tint to it and she looked sleepless and distressed. It was easy to forget in the safety of the nursery, amongst Lucky’s comforting gurgles, but they were about to launch their biggest and most dangerous attack ever, and she must be completely terrified. For herself, for the family they’d cobbled together out here in space, and for the entire universe.

 

“Okay,” he agreed.

  
  


***

  


“So Lance, huh?”

 

“Yes,” Keith agreed irritably. He made no further attempt at a response, his focus trained on the knife he was twirling in his hands like a baton. They were close to the castle now, scaultrite successfully retrieved, and he didn’t have enough emotional energy left to even fathom what Hunk was really asking him, let alone answer it. He was looking forward to getting home and collapsing into bed.

 

He was, he mused, probably the only one of them that thought of the castle as _home_ . Why wouldn’t he? It was where he lived, _had_ lived for a long time now, and it was where all the stuff he liked was. Nowhere else in the universe had as much to offer him as the Altean battleship.

 

“Not in the mood to talk?” Hunk suggested perceptively. Keith nodded eagerly, fighting the familiar exhaustion clinging to his muscles. He was so often tired that he was used to ignoring it, especially if there was more important things to be done.

 

There was a training exercise at the garrison, a simulation to prepare them for a situation where something happened to their copilot while they were under threat. They’d had to fly the simulator through a complicated flight path, without any rest, food, or drink at all for the entire day the exercise lasted. Half of the trainees had tapped out or fallen asleep in the pilot’s seat. Some had crashed the simulator, others removed by instructors who took pity on them.

Keith was the only first year who finished, the only others being people on their third and fourth attempts at the exercise. He had gone into a state of such an intense focus that he still didn’t remember much of it. Shiro had come in to retrieve him when he landed the simulator successfully; he remembered hearing Shiro shouting at the instructor who’d let him keep going for so long. First years weren’t meant to complete the exercise (“He’s a _child_!” Shiro had yelled furiously) they were just supposed to spend a few hours at the wheel at most. The point of the exercise the first time around was just to show them what they were getting themselves in for, and just how dedicated they were going to have to be if they wanted to make it.

 

When Shiro came to get him out, he was staring blankly at the simulated window screen, his hand still gripping the joystick tightly. He remembered watching his fingers being prised away, feeling like he was someone else watching the scene from afar. They said he must be exhausted. He didn’t feel tired, or hungry, or _anything_. He shook his head when Shiro asked all of these questions, reasoning that he must be fine because he would’ve noticed if he wasn’t. Shiro reluctantly allowed him to stand without help when he rejected it. Everyone shot him shocked glances, unable to believe that he was not only conscious but claiming to be fine.

 

He collapsed as soon as he was out of the simulator.

 

Looking back, he had always assumed that particular experience was just an intense hyperfocus. Suddenly he was questioning everything he thought he knew about himself; and the unique patterns of his own brain were no exception. What if those were his Galra genes swimming to the surface? Maybe the adrenaline had called to the part of him that was born to fight and destroy and not ask questions, and the rest of his brain had been imprisoned by his alien ferocity.

 

“Buddy?”

 

Keith made a strangled sound, a little too surprised by the quiet voice of his friend than a paladin of Voltron should be. He immediately began berating himself for letting his focus wander so much while they were still technically on a mission. What if it hadn’t been Hunk, but an attack, and his dulled reaction had been all the time they needed to launch a-

 

“ _Keith_.” The voice was firmer this time. Keith looked up, Hunk’s concerned eyes making him instantly relax, despite his still-chattering brain. “Are you okay, man? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”  

 

There was no attack. He was safe, and he would do better next time. That was all that mattered. Without meaning to, he heard Lance’s voice in his head: “ _No What Ifs. Nothing went wrong, so there’s no point in thinking about what would happen if it did_. _Save your energy for preventing the next disaster instead of an old one that never even happened_.”

He could practically see Lance’s smile as he said the words in Keith’s mind, a mantra the blue paladin himself often repeated when he couldn’t stop obsessing over a failure. It had been a longer speech originally, a whole carefully planned pep talk that Lance had given more to himself than Keith after they’d successfully rescued Allura from the Galra. Everyone had been shaken when they got back from the splintered wormhole disaster, and for Lance it had been the perfect opportunity to obsess over every one of his failures during his time as blue paladin.

 

They’d sat, tangled together in the observatory - their favourite spot - with Keith listening intently as Lance spoke. Keith had pretended to be worse off than he was once he realised that Lance didn’t want to admit to himself that he was terrified of failing, and comforting the red paladin was the perfect excuse. Most people said Lance rambled, but Keith took issue with that. Lance was just thorough, and he had a lot to say. Okay, so maybe sometimes he got a little distracted, or went off on a panic-tangent when he was under pressure or trying (badly) to lie. His pep talks, though, were always brilliant. He never left one anxiety unaddressed, and he spoke with such enthusiastic conviction that even Keith struggled _not_ to have faith in him.

 

That was why it became a personal mantra to the two of them: _No what ifs_. Lance would whisper it as his hand ghosted across Keith’s as he danced past at an alien victory celebration, when he noticed Keith realising too late that he’d failed to return whatever the equivalent of a handshake was to this particular alien culture; whenever he noticed Keith’s face sinking into _that_ frown that meant he was obsessing over something he’d done earlier. Keith started to return it by accident at first - always feeling a little unmoored when he was supposed to offer comfort, he’d blurted the same thing that helped him, figuring it would do the same for someone else.

 

Lance had looked ridiculously gratified when Keith said it. So he made a habit of it. He tried to mimic Lance’s soft, restrained touches with false indifference and made his tone as reassuring-yet-casual  as possible, comfortably certain that Lance (for some inexplicable reason) was usually just endeared to the fact that he was even trying. “No what ifs,” he had said, with a teasing grin, after Lance had hit the one hour mark of lamenting the lack of consoles to plug his loser Earth videogame into.   
“No what ifs,” he had murmured, when Lance woke up from a nightmare with his family and started asking, “What if I had brought my phone with me to raid the kitchens? I could’ve texted them before we got out of satellite reach!”   
He hadn’t been as gentle as Lance was, clamping his hand over the taller boy’s mouth roughly to end his self-deprecation and glaring firmly at him. It must’ve worked because Lance’s frown was replaced by a small, fond grin.

 

“I don’t know why I even bother talking to you,” Hunk said loudly. “You just keep zoning out on me. What the quiznak do you look so happy about? Oh, right, ew.”

 

Keith gave Hunk a blank look, whatever the yellow paladin was grossed out by going over his head, but it quickly shifted into delight when Hunk announced, “I’m picking up the castle on our sensors now. We should be landing in about twenty minutes.”

  


***

  


“I don’t know,” Hunk said nervously. “I’m just- Lance is _really_ into him, man. You didn’t see him when we were leaving for the mission. I don’t have a problem with the idea of him and Keith or anything, but. I guess I’m just worried Lance is more invested in this than he is, y’know?”

 

Pidge snorted. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

 

Hunk looked down at his toes. Pidge was right: it wasn’t that Lance was unlikeable, but he tended to dive into everything he did headfirst and more than one of his past relationships had ended because he had fallen in love much more deeply and more quickly than his partner. Anyone who stuck around long enough to get past the defensive humour and sometimes grating lack of volume control would find someone very much worth their affection, Hunk was personally certain of that, but Lance burned with a fiery kindness and easily saw through people to their true selves and loved them for it immediately.

 

The first dude Lance had ever dated, a boy Lance had forgiven but Hunk’s mind still clouded with vitriol when he thought about him, had taken advantage of Lance’s ready affection and overeagerness to please, and treated him more like a lackey than a lover. Hunk still remembered his rage when Lance had casually admitted that he was doing all of the boy’s homework. The worst part was that he hadn’t seen anything wrong with it.  
“It’s just a way of showing that I care about him,” he’d said in the midnight darkness of their shared dorm, flashing a dimpled grin.

 

Even after that experience, his first-year innocence never really went away. It made Hunk extra conscious of anyone taking advantage of his best friend, shamelessly protective of the blue paladin’s naive selflessness. He’d always said that Lance would make someone the perfect rom-com-love-interest-rivalling boyfriend someday.

 

They both jumped, snapping into formal and alert postures as the intimidating leader of the Blade of Marmora suddenly appeared between them. He ducked into the sheltered hallway that Pidge and Hunk had made their temporary meeting place, looking oddly embarrassed.  
“I’m sorry to intrude,” he said carefully, “But I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation as I was passing through.”   
  
Pidge and Hunk exchanged looks.

 

“Please,” he said, raising one flattened palm in surrender, “There’s no need for that. I was simply surprised to hear you doubting the red paladin’s affection, that is all.”  


Hunk folded his arms, head tilted in confusion. “What do you mean?”

 

“Well I…” Kolivan appeared to be genuinely flustered. “I’ve never seen anyone quite so openly smitten as he is with your blue paladin. It’s quite embarrassing, really. My men find it a source of great amusement.”

 

Hunk and Pidge exchanged another, more wide eyed look.

 

“ _Keith_?” Pidge spluttered. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same paladin?”   


Kolivan merely blinked his glowing eyes at them. “Yes..?” He sounded equally as disbelieving as they were. “You hadn’t noticed? Then I really am concerned with the hands Voltron has landed in. Do you not see the way he always angles his feet towards… Lance, wasn’t it? And he’s always at Lance’s back, at the perfect distance to defend him and draw fire if there were an attack. I almost feel sorry for him, with how indifferent this Lance is in return. The way Keith speaks to him… I can’t believe you aren’t overwhelmed with pity for the poor boy.”  


“The way Keith speaks to him?” Hunk said incredulously. “You mean ridiculing his skills and grunting at him?”  


Kolivan nodded. “Exactly! I’ve never seen such complete and adoration so openly displayed in such a professional setting.” He sounded almost disdainful, which Hunk ignored in favour of complete and utter shock.

 

So perhaps that last part didn’t exactly take Galra insight to see - Lance and Keith’s ridiculous bickering had certainly seemed flirty right from the beginning… on Lance’s side at least. But it was more reminiscent of the beginnings of and avoidance of feelings, far from full-blown adoration. But apparently Keith lounging at the corners away from Lance, eyes fixed on the door rather than the object of his apparent affections, and being what they had all assumed was thoughtlessly cold towards him - all of those things were signs that he was completely, embarrassingly, head-over-heels for Lance.

 

Hunk boggled.

  
  


***

  


“So,” Lance began, cringing at his loud voice in the silence of Keith’s room; their room.

 

Keith didn’t appear to care, just rolled over against Lance’s chest so that he was looking sideways at his boyfriend instead of up at the ceiling. He made a small, curious noise that Lance took as a sign to keep talking.

 

“So,” he repeated, “We - Allura and I - got some answers from The Blade. About Lucky,” he clarified.

 

Keith sat up immediately, violet eyes lit with interest. It dragged a smile from Lance’s mouth unwillingly, reminding him of earlier in the evening. The moment he’d stepped out of the hangar on his return from his mission, Keith had run to Lance. Gratified, Lance had enveloped him in a passionate embrace that lasted what felt like several minutes. They broke apart to Pidge’s whooping and Allura’s pointed silence, and Keith immediately asked Lance where Lucky was. As it turned out, he’d only gone to Lance to ask where the baby was when she didn’t immediately greet him with the rest of the team.

  
“I didn’t _mind_ getting you instead,” he’d insisted later, his funny combination of fierce and bashful whenever he comforted Lance.

 

“Are you just going to stare at me like that, or are you going to tell me?” Keith said irritably. Lance could only smile lovingly at him.

 

“Okay, okay!” He settled back against his pillow, beginning to recount the same story he and Allura had heard from a very surprised Antok earlier in the day. “So, basically there used to be these, like, places where Alteans and Galra especially interacted. Like certain colonies in Altea where lots of Galra lived, and planets they both inhabited equally.” His brow wrinkled, his hands running through Keith’s hair on autopilot. “At least, I think that’s what they were saying. Anyway, in the early days of Zarkon’s reign, he was able to find these Galra with big Altean ancestry. So… you remember when that one breed of zebras went extinct, but they’d bred with some _other_ zebras so scientists tried to kind of reverse breed them back into the original breed?”   


“No,” Keith said flatly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t see how zebras have anything to do with Lucky.”

 

Lance faltered at Keith’s tone, abrupt even for him. His fingers curled subconsciously around Keith’s wrist - _are you mad because I’m being an idiot? -_ and Keith shook his head frantically back - _sorry, just came out wrong_. Lance’s smile returned, grateful to the code between them for giving him the confidence to ask things he’d never dare to ask verbally. Instead of assuming Keith hated him now because he talked about zebras at inappropriate times and withdrawing himself in anguish, he was able to conquer his stupid sensitivity to rejection and remind himself that Keith _loved_ him, no matter how much his brain wanted to convince him otherwise.

 

“Zarkon wiped out the Alteans, but there were all these half and quarter Altean Galra wandering around. And he thought, like, ‘the Alteans are my enemies, but what if I had some evil Alteans who could do my bidding’. The Alteans have a lot of very useful stuff in their genetics,” he explained. “The whole shapeshifting thing would  be great for spy work.”

 

“Okay…” Keith nodded along, still ultimately uncomprehending of quite how this tied in to Lucky. “But that was a _long_ time ago.”

 

“The Galra scientists and druids experimented with these half-Alteans, splicing their genes into unborn Galra and such. Having Altean parents, many were unsympathetic to the cause and forcibly experimented on.” Keith visibly cringed, but Lance continued. “As the years wore on and the original Galra heritage got further and further away, they began using artificial genes, and those from other alien races in order to try and create the perfect warrior, and the combination of inbreeding and preserved Altean stem cells finally beginning to decay caused many of the experiments to become incredibly sickly. The foetuses became less and less likely to survive even the incubation period.”

 

Keith looked pale and shaken as he took in Lance’s story, the implications of suffering at the hands of this attempt to genetically engineer weaponry. His own heritage must have made even more upsetting to him than it was to Lance - and Lance didn’t exactly enjoy hearing about Galra eugenics.

 

“That’s Lucky,” he finished awkwardly. “They don’t know how she got out, exactly. They were aware of the program, but with their limited resources they decided to let it die down naturally and focus on other things. Whoever she escaped with, they weren’t with The Blade.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there might be 1 more chapter, but maybe another 2...I'll leave the chapter count for now but it may go up when I post chapter 12. I didn't realise until I started writing this how much was actually left to get through before the end, hence such a long chapter! Sorry for the wait, please enjoy! (it's like 2am and I'm too tired for editing right now but when i FINALLY finish this story I'll go through and tidy everything up like I did for a wing and a half earlier) this chapter is quite lance-centric because i drank too much appreciate adhd lance juice


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when will the lies end!!! There is going to be ANOTHER CHAPTER. yet again it was a case of "im really busy and i had more to address than i thought and i decided instead of keeping you waiting even longer id give you half a chapter now and half later". IM SO SORRY for keeping you waiting so long! Work has been insane, and I go back to school on monday. There will be (hopefully only one) more part, and also an epilogue set further in the future that I will post as a sequel because i feel like having it in the same work at the end of a chapter would be kind of jarring somehow.

Keith's mouth formed a tiny ‘o’, his eyes wide in concern. Lance expected to be attacked with more questions. This was the first lead Keith had on where he came from since finding the Blade of Marmora. 

Instead, Keith's concern was aimed in a completely different direction. 

“Is Lucky sick?” he asked anxiously. 

 

Lance titled his head in confusion, his brain taking a moment to catch up when Keith didn't say what he expected him to. “Whatya mean, Red?”

Keith leaned his head against Lance's chest, his face disappearing from view. “You said the- the  _ experiments _ were getting sicker?” he mumbled, shyness colouring his voice in the way Lance was pretty confident only he got to see. When Keith was around people he didn't know and wasn't comfortable with, he resorted to standoffishness and irritation over the quiet, anxious tone he took when he was with someone he was  comfortable with. Even then, he was only like this rarely. If he said something he was worried was stupid, or he actually let his guard down and did something vulnerable; Lance had to treasure every time Keith buried his face in Lance’s shirt, or went red enough to rival his lion. 

Lance frowned, worry suddenly clouding his enjoyment of Keith’s shyness. “We check her in the med bay once a week, and she seems healthy,” he mused. “Coran would know if something was wrong. Don’t worry ‘bout it, Keith.”

“Okay,” Keith said quietly. “Good.”

 

He rolled over and made the bed wobble as he kicked around like a dog making its bed. While Lance was used to his oblivious scrabbling whenever he settled down to sleep, he still resented the blanket being tugged below his shoulders while his hands were trapped under Keith and he couldn’t right it. 

They didn’t speak again until the morning, aside from Lance’s whispered, “Goodnight,  cariño,” and Keith never asked anything else about Lucky’s origins. Lance had the sneaking suspicion that, if that lab _was_ where Keith had originated too, he didn't want to know.

 

***

 

“This is so  _ unfair _ ,” Pidge cried. “Shiro, did you just see that?”

 

“There’s nothing wrong with forming alliances in this game, Pidge,” Allura said diplomatically. “It’s a game of strategy and negotiation, the perfect way for young Altean children - and now you - to practise your statesmanship!” 

She leaned over Lucky, sat in the princess’ lap with her cards clutched in her hands, waving them around delightedly. “That’s right, Lucky, you’re learning about  _ conciliation _ ,” she cooed to the baby in a squeaky voice. Pidge grimaced, then smiled; while Allura was still painfully hopeless at dealing with children, but at least she’d got past the stage where she very unsubtly attempted to avoid coming within ten feet of, or god forbid  _ holding _ the baby. Shiro was starting to lose patience with all the angles he’d had to catch her from whenever someone handed her to the princess and Allura tossed her just about anywhere in a blind panic.

“Yes, but they’re totally biased!” Pidge glared at where Lance and Keith were muttering obviously between themselves, their fingers loosely tangled together between them, leaving their cards completely obvious to each other. They didn’t even notice that they were being talked about because a strand of Keith’s rapidly growing hair had fallen into his eyes and Lance was concentrating on tucking it behind his ear while Keith was too busy blushing and fluttering his eyelashes like a total loser. “I hate Altean board games,” Pidge huffed quietly. The games from Earth - where the aim was to stab everyone you loved right in the back - were much better. Alteans were painfully obsessed with civility, apparently even in their free time.

“No one is going to take you side on this, Pidge. Everyone loves us,” Lance crowed. His fingers curled possessively but carefully around Keith’s jaw and Pidge suddenly felt uncomfortable watching them. Despite his chest puffed out in boastful self-parody, Lance’s eyes were heavy with complete adoration that made Pidge want to puke (and aww in a loud and high pitched squeal. But Pidge, loyal warrior for all that is right and non-gross, was fighting those sentimental urges hard). The moment felt like something private between them that no-one else should be watching. Pidge resented but respected the way they could make anyone feel like an intruder no matter how public the place.

 

It was odd, Pidge mused, how much Keith had changed in some ways. Before, he had all these small and seemingly irrelevant things that he would never do in public; his hugs, for example, were already rare enough, but he also would never hug anyone in front of anyone else. There were other things he never did in public: never took his shoes off, always waited for everyone else to clear out of the shared bathroom before he went to brush his teeth (Pidge only knew because Keith had been caught lurking outside multiple times and made awkward flustered excuses when Pidge had said, “Come on, buddy! Don’t hold up the bathroom line. On this ship, two people can brush at once.) and he often seemed uncomfortable just with laughing in public.

In retrospect, much of that hadn’t changed at all. But he was also suddenly perfectly happy to rub his nose against Lance’s in an intimate embrace when he left for a mission, and for Lance to be his personal armchair and pillow at all times. It wasn’t like he’d got over all of his reservations. It was more like he actually just forgot anyone else was watching whenever he looked at Lance.  _ Ew _ .

 

“I’ve had a great effect on his behaviour,” Lance said proudly. “Shiro says.”

At that, both Lance and Shiro earned disgruntled, betrayed looks from Keith. “Don't say that like I'm a dog that got done ,” Keith complained, glaring daggers at Lane. Ignoring his irritation, Lance busied himself fussing over Keith and making no move towards the game despite it being his turn. Poor Keith made a valiant effort not to give away in his expresson the fact that he enjoyed having his hair played with and put into sloppy little twin braids by Lance’s absent fingers. Obviously, he failed miserably. 

Lance didn’t seem to be aware of what he was doing, his hands running on autopilot from years of playing with the hair of his mom and sisters, and eventually doing the hair of all six of his nieces when they got to school age. Sometimes Lance braided the air in front of him while he slept, the mechanism was so well-entrenched. At the Garrison, he even admitted that he was concerned about the kids getting picked on for going to school with awful hairstyles while he was away studying. His only sister who didn’t work in the mornings was a tomboy with close-cropped hair even shorter than Lance’s, so he really was the family's best hope at passable hair. 

Pidge missed the days when Keith wouldn’t let anyone anywhere near his hair. Back then he would probably have flung himself out of the airlock if some miraculous circumstance somehow resulted in him having pigtails, especially in public.

 

  
“ _Whatever_ , Lance, Enjoy your neutered boyfriend. I’m still going to destroy you at... uh…”

 

“Welcome, Welcome,” Allura helpfully interjected.  _ Wow  _ \- was that really the game’s name? Pidge didn’t know why anyone ever agreed to playing a game that was introduced under such a pathetic name. Never mind the giant battle lions with huge swords: Alteans were a race of complete sissies. 

 

***

 

“I have to learn,” Keith insisted, turning around and glaring at Lance with an expression that seemed ferocious but was actually just stubborn, begging him to understand. Clearly, he didn’t.

 

“What are you even talking about?” Lance said, fingers gentle and fond in Keith’s hair despite the exasperation colouring his tone. Keith couldn’t see his face, curled up in the rec room on the couch with his head on the blue paladin’s shoulder.  _ Lance would make it obvious if he was mad _ , Keith reminded himself. If he sounded a little annoyed, he had a bad day or it was just a miscalculation. That was what Lance had insisted on multiple occasions, anyway; “I’d want you to  _ know  _ if I was mad at you, boy. You don’t get off the hook easy just ‘cause I didn’t make it clear enough. I’m also never going to hold my feelings over your head and then hold it against you that you don’t know what I’m thinking.” 

 

“I have to be a better paladin. I have to stop ruining things with my temper and learn how to work as a team.” These were all sentiments he’d been repeating for the past hour or so already, but Lance didn’t seem to understand. How could he, when Keith didn’t tell him the real reason he was so concerned? Shiro wanted him to lead Voltron. Theoretically. He was a weak link of the most important chain in the Universe, and he couldn’t seem to do anything without putting his foot wrong. If he was doing to lead, he needed to figure out this human (and alien) interaction thing, and fast. “I can’t learn if you’re always coddling me and making it easy! I have to grow up.”

 

“I don’t-”

 

“You’re too considerate of me, Lance. I used to always be struggling… with everything. You made everything too easy, and I always know what’s going on when you’re beside me.” He took a shaky breath. “But what if one day I don’t have you there? And I should be able to function by myself. You always let me know how you’re feeling, but what about when I have to work with someone who  _ wants  _ to hide what they’re thinking?”

 

“You’re saying,” Lance said slowly, hurt shining brightly and plainly in his blue eyes, “That you don’t want me to help you when you miss things any more, so that you can be better at undercover work?”

 

Keith pouted. Why did Lance have to look so injured about it? If anything, he should be relieved that he didn’t have to watch out for Keith like he always seemed to be doing. “No- well, yeah. But other things too. Teamwork - the bond between the paladins. Making alliances,” his mouth turned up, “Like that stupid game, Hello Hello, or whatever. I should be able to do that by myself, no crutches. I’m supposed to be one of the seven most important people in the Universe. How many people do you think have sacrificed their lives for me already? I have to live up to that and I can’t have so many weaknesses just waiting to trip us all up.”   
  


Lance didn’t stop looking wounded, despite the fact that none of this had anything to do with him. It made Keith huff, “Why do you look so hurt! None of this is because  _ you  _ weren’t good enough. It’s because you, everyone on this dumb ship, you’re all absolutely awesome and I have to stop being the weakest link.”   
  


Unexpectedly, Lance started laughing. Keith would maybe have expected earnestness, or frowning, or even preening at being called awesome. Instead Lance’s cheeks were rosy from amusement and he was giggling while staring incredulously at Keith. “I’m not hurt for my sake. I’m hurt that you think any of those things, that’s all. It’s just so funny that you think you’re the weakest link? I’m sorry I missed it if you were feeling like this before. You’re just so great at everything all the time that I assumed you would have no doubts,” he explained seriously. His hand snaked around Keith’s shoulders, brushing some stray hair behind his ear when it got there. “You’re definitely the coolest paladin. Can I show you something?”   
  


Keith shrugged mutely, though he did complain when Lance removed his warmth from around Keith to reach for something a little way away from them on the floor. It was his helmet. As if to ask why he’d interrupted their heart to heart to grab his helmet, Keith blinked as he stared at it, brow wrinkled.   
“Put it on,” Lance murmured, nudging it forwards promptingly until Keith took it and hesitantly set it over his head. He looked up when Lance made a small choked noise, looking askance at him. “Sorry. It’s weird but you look cute in my helmet. Uh-”

 

Keith tilted his head. “It’s exactly the same as my helmet?”

 

“I like seeing you in blue, I guess,” Lance replied distractedly as he poked at something on the side of the helmet. There was clearly some kind of unsaid meaning to that but Keith ignored it in favour of watching Lance’s concentrated face; it was one of his favourite Lance expressions, especially because when Lance was concentrating on something he often neglected to control his face as much as he usually did, and whatever emotions were hiding beneath at that moment would slip through. It wasn't a particularly complicated task, and the angle was probably the biggest issue as he tilted his head to reach the touchpad of the helmet.

 

It was an addition of Pidge’s, a sensor embedded into one side of their helmet so that it would only be activated when they traced a chosen shape onto it. In the face of all the advanced Galra technology and magic, it was really a tiny measure of security to keep their enemies out of their communications should a helmet fall into the wrong hands, but they never knew when it could earn them a few extra seconds and if they had learned anything it was that every second counted in this war. The helmet could also be coded so that certain patterns controlled other functions; so now they could open different channels with only certain people, or make the helmet sent of a distress signal. 

 

Yeah, Pidge really was handy.

 

Lance drew something on the side of the helmet and then smiled. “Check it out.”

 

About to ask what he was supposed to check out, Keith stopped. At the bottom of the visor screen, out of the way of his main line of vision, ran subtitles of what Lance had just said. Something in the corner caught his eye, where important intelligence and passwords and any other short term information was usually stored. It had a list of reminders, things like ‘meds’ and ‘wash Blue’s left leg before she goes rusty’. 

“The best feature,” Lance explained, echoed by the subtitles as he did, “Is this summary thing. It’s kind of still learning what it’s supposed to remember but it still helps. For when I get those huge, complicated briefings that I just can’t decipher. It picks out only the bits that are related to me, and I a simple list of everything I’m supposed to actually do.”

 

Keith was aware that he was just staring vacantly at Lance, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He thought the subtitles (actually accurate thanks to the audio-recognition technology, much more advanced than back on earth) were great and everything, but they had just been talking about his problem and while Lance often switched topics with little warning, he was rarely thoughtless like that. Suddenly changing the subject away without offering any comfort at all made Keith feel a little anxious. It wasn’t that he expected Lance to solve all his problems for him, but Lance was always at least there with kind words and reassurance whenever anyone needed it. How hopeless was Keith’s situation that Lance’s only effort was to try and distract him with a cool feature on his helmet?

 

Interrupting his thoughts, Lance groaned. “No, baby, look,” he said exasperatedly, reaching out to remove the helmet. “My point is, we  _ all  _ have crutches. They make us better paladins, not worse. If something doesn’t work, we fix it. We’re a good team. Why do you want to undo the solutions we’ve found?”

 

“Something could happen to you,” Keith muttered.   
  


“You’re far from helpless when I’m not around,” Lance pointed out. “If anything happens to me, we’ll have bigger problems than the fact that you’re a terrible diplomat.”   
  


Keith pouted. “Wow. That makes me feel so much better.”

 

“You know what I mean. It doesn’t matter in the big picture. As long as someone out of me, Allura, Shiro, and Hunk survives, then you’ve got that covered. And if all four of us are out of action then you’ll have lots of other problems to worry about,” he said brightly. “You, Pidge, and Coran. The last hope of the universe.” He shuddered teasingly, his grin wide and playful. 

 

“I’m serious,” he added after a moment. “Don’t go isolating yourself because you think you aren’t good enough at something. We’re a team full of people with strong strengths and strong weaknesses. We all fit together perfectly, and we  _ all  _ fail when we don’t have each other to lean on. I needed Pidge to make my helmet like that, and I’m there when Pidge needs to be reminded to breathe whenever there’s a cool robot around.” He knocked his shoulder against Keith’s. 

 

“Okay…”

  
“We need you,” Lance insisted. “It’s okay that you need us too. It would be weird if you didn’t, actually. It’s nice to be needed. I know this isn’t a normal situation and the rules are different and we have to prioritise the war over having the right amount of dependency in our relationship but no one is going to have all their bases covered. We’ve got you, okay?  _ I’ve  _ got you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of this is dialogue fix-it for things i personally thought weren't handled great (or weren't mentioned at all - which is fine, because it's a plot-based cartoon show, but that still means I want to explore/deal with it myself). Lucky is pretty absent in this chapter because of aforementioned time/word count constraints and she won't be much in the next chapter either because shit is going down and you can't have a baby around for that! But, without being spoilery, she'll be very central in the epilogue so if you're here for kidfic stuff you'll enjoy that part ^^


	13. Chapter 13

“No,” Lance gaped. “No, no, no, no.”

 

“Lance-” Shiro started. 

 

“Keith is not going onto that ship by himself,” Lance insisted, tears pricking at his eyes without permission. “You are  _ not  _ letting Keith go on a- a suicide mission. We’re a team! We need him.”   
  


“He’s  _ Keith _ . He’ll be fine. I don’t like this any more than you do, but it’s the only way to defeat Zarkon. None of us will be safe unless we do that,” Shiro argued. Lance opened his mouth to respond, but Shiro’s firm look was final. There was something so severe about his gaze, the fact that Shiro almost never pulled rank making it all the more inviolable when he did.

 

“Where is he?”

 

“He’s speaking to Allura,” Shiro said quietly. “He wouldn’t leave without you. He just didn’t want to upset you.”

 

“Well I  _ am  _ upset!” Lance huffed. 

 

“Well… exactly.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Keith was well-trained in the art of pretending not to be scared. He had a black belt in avoiding his own fear and making sure no-one else knew either. Fear was stupid. If he had to do something anyway, he might as well not freak out about it. No disaster was ever averted because someone was afraid. Yes, he could very well be about to die, but being afraid wouldn’t increase his chances of surviving any.

 

That was why he was so startled when Allura of all people found him loitering in the red lion’s hangar and astutely addressed his hidden anxieties. And also just because he’d been too zoned-out to notice the sound of her footsteps so her voice had physically startled him, already wrung out from overthinking. Expecting Lance, his smile dropped when he whirled around.    
“Allura…”   
  


“Keith. You must feel very afraid right now,” Allura said softly.

 

“I-” Keith opened his mouth to deny it, then changed his mind. “Look after Lucky,” he said instead, “If I- oh boy. Make sure Lance is all right.” It was only at that moment that he genuinely realised he could very well be about to die. 

 

Allura’s eyes suddenly went all round and watery. It took a few seconds to realise that she was about to start crying, at which his panic response slowly booted up and frantically tried to figure out  _ how to stop the person who doesn’t really like me at the moment from crying.  _   
“Hey, uh, don’t cry?” he said lamely. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold back if she started crying, and he didn’t want to look all red and terrified if Lance tracked him down before he snuck away. 

 

There was a part of him that was furious at himself for avoiding Lance like this, when it could have been the last time he’d ever see him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Lance. It was more like the opposite, and he valued him too much to want their last memory together to be Lance screaming at Keith for being a selfish, impulsive moron (he was) and Keith screaming back at Lance for some unfathomable reason like he always did when he was prodded and regretted it later.

 

Allura looked at him mournfully. “I know I struggle with the idea of you being Galra, but you’re my family too.” She looked like she was going to say something facetious. “After all, you don’t choose your family,” she said lightly. Most families were chosen by means other than a fortuitous set of coincidences throwing them first together and then into space, where they joined up with a second family and became one. When he flinched slightly - was Allura lamenting the fact that she couldn’t choose to be rid of him? - she added, “I’m glad we can’t.”

 

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “Me too.”

 

He was unexpectedly pulled into a hug by the taller girl. With her pressed up against him, he realised with a jolt that she was shorter than she seemed; the gravity-defying miles of hair floating around her frame seemed to add stature and poise that wasn’t really there. She was still taller than him, though - another person above him in the rankings, it seemed. He hadn’t cared about being in the shorter half of the team until Lance had started teasing him for it and gloating over his own height. Now Keith, who didn’t appreciate being called ‘shortie’ - or perhaps Lance intended it to be directed as ‘shawty’ - was always comparing his height to everyone else, praying Pidge was already finished growing and that he could be one of those late bloomers who suddenly hit five-ten at eighteen. He was so focused on the realisation that she didn’t dwarf him in height as completely as she did in her levels of diplomatic restraint, it didn’t occur to him that he was supposed to hug back until she was pulling away with a hurt expression.

 

Feeling awkward- and hoping everyone wasn’t going to want to say goodbye the same way, because as much as a hug felt nice and warm it was  _ exhausting  _ and  _ stressful  _ and he didn’t have six more in him _ \-  _ he let his arms wrap around her back. Most of their hug was spent worrying that he was doing it wrong: too cold, too tight, too romantic, too unenthusiastic. She was smiling when she pulled away, so he decided he must have done okay. She looked surprised, but by now Keith was numb to the hurt of people being surprised that he had warmth in him. 

 

“Please come back okay,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be responsible for comforting a mourning  _ and  _ uh, companionless Lance.”

 

Keith’s eyes widened, something unexplainable stabbing at him. “You think he’d-”

 

“No!” Allura shook her head sharply. “I was just making a joke…”

 

“Oh, right.” Keith laughed. “It’s funny,” he said seriously. Never let it be said that he didn’t have a sense of humour, he thought. He may need things explaining to him on occasion, but he could sure laugh at the idea of his boyfriend rebounding (attempting to rebound would be more accurate, because he would definitely get rejected) on him after his death as a casualty of the bleakest war in the universe, with a ten thousand year old alien princess. 

 

“How is he?” Allura asked carefully.

 

“Lance? I don’t know.”

 

Allura gasped, looking personally offended. Keith winced, ready to somehow have triggered all her initial horror and revulsion after he got back from the Blade. “You haven’t spoken to him? Keith! You’re leaving soon, when were you-” she drew back as her eyes lit up with understanding, her eyes blazing with even more fury, if that was possible. “You were going to avoid him. You were going to just jet off onto the most dangerous mission any of us have ever been on and  _ not say goodbye to him _ .”

 

“I didn’t want to argue,” he said limply. It sounded weak even to his own ears.

 

“Oh no. Keith, you know that I hate to meddle in the personal affairs of the paladins,” okay, that was definitely questionable, “but this simply can’t be. It’s incredibly cruel to  _ both  _ of you. You must go and talk to him immediately,” she admonished.

 

He opened his mouth to argue with her. That was the final nail in his coffin. When she saw him open his mouth to speak, her eyes hardened enough to make him immediately silence. “I’m  _ disappointed  _ in you, Keith,” she murmured softly. 

 

He groaned. Shiro must have spilled his secret weakness: He couldn’t handle letting people down. The disappointment of the people he loved was completely unbearable to him, and he would do anything to avoid it. That was how he got into this situation in the first place, avoiding Lance’s disappointment. Now he was backed into a corner because he had to face either Lance or Allura, and no one who valued their life or their dignity would choose to go against Allura if they could help it.

  
  


***

 

When he finally found Keith, Lance was busy trying to convince himself that his boyfriend wouldn’t fly straight into the heart of Zarkon’s ship just to avoid him. If Keith had a problem, Lance hoped his influence had at least been enough to make Keith deal with it differently to  _ that _ . He knew, on a logical level, that Shiro would skin Keith if he went on a suicide mission in order to avoid breaking up with Lance. It was just difficult, without seeing Keith and taking stock of the affection in his eyes for himself, Lance struggled to reassure the restless parts of himself.

 

He wasn’t sure if it helped or made everything much worse to see Keith stumbling around with the bleakest expression he’d ever seen.

“Lance!” he yelped, eyes lighting up with more of a frantic glow than a warm one. “I’msosorryItriedtoleavewithoutsayinggoodbye,” he mumbled.

 

“ _ What _ ?” 

 

“I said, I’m sorry I tried to leave without saying goodbye to you,” Keith said a little too slowly, looking Lance in the eye and enunciating carefully and overly loudly. There was a little glint in his eye, like he knew it was his fault for muttering and he was trying to avoid Lance calling him out on it.

 

“I have processing issues and you were talking at the speed of light, I’m not deaf,” Lance complained jokingly. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Keith repeated steadfastly. “I’m sorry.”   
  


Lance sighed. “Don’t get all mopey,  cariño, it makes me want to cry when you look like you just got grounded on prom night or something. You’re here. It’s okay.” He paused. “Why didn’t you  come sooner?”

 

Keith made a noise that Lance could only describe as a whimper. “I was scared,” he admitted quietly.

 

There was a time Lance would’ve replied with an incredulous “You were  _ what _ ?” but that was before he shared a bed with the kid who still yelped every time he got in the bed and Lance was already there, hidden in covers, despite that being almost daily fare at this point. Keith was afraid of weird shadows, absolutely all noises after artificial sundown, sudden movements, and a particular fixation with the chance that some desert spiders had stowed away on Blue and been breeding in all the crevices on the ship, ready to emerge and crawl into his mouth while he slept. Keith was not, however, afraid of Lance. 

 

“You don’t want me to go,” Keith said bluntly, as if stating the obvious made anything any clearer. “I didn’t want to see you getting mad and upset over it. Especially- especially if that would be the last time I s-”

 

“Stop right there,” Lance interrupted quickly, “Before you make me cry. Don’t talk like that,  _ please _ .” He inhaled sharply, shutting his eyes for a moment and wishing this Thace guy wasn’t such a let-down. “I really don’t want you to go, duh. But I’m not an idiot so I know you’re going anyway.”

 

Keith laughed sharply. Then he ducked his head, embarrassment clear across his face. It was unusual - and cute  - to see him so startled by his own voice. 

 

“You’re gonna be great,” Lance whispered quietly, the words he had planned so carefully slipping away from him in the moment he needed them. He was aware of the time nipping impatiently at their ankles, the small group of rebels in whom lay most of the hope for the universe congregated just outside. “Come back in one piece, okay?”

 

“If I’m in two pieces, I won’t be able to  _ get  _ back,” Keith pointed out.

 

“Shut up,” Lance hissed, half amused and half shaken. “Just tell me you love me and you’ll- you’ll do your best to come back safe.”

 

“Okay,” Keith said earnestly, nodding his head so hard his hair fluttered around his face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the prologue will be in the same work after all because I'm lazy and I don't want to have to come up with another title? This isn't a cliffhanger because this (mostly) follows canon events so you all know Keith is okay. The next chapter will be set after the fight with ol' zarks has ended.


End file.
